Winchester athlete-in-waiting Marimba Odundo-Mendez is spoilt for sporting choice.

The 16-year-old, who is moving south from the Aldershot, Farnham & District Athletic Club, is not only a gifted sprinter, but his rugby union skills have earned him a place in the Harlequins and England Youth Academies.

It promises to be a busy summer for the lad from Farnham.

Athletics-wise, he has his sights set on running the 200 metres at the World Youth Games in Canada, while in the rugby world the flying winger is hoping to go to Italy for a ten-day training camp for potential England players.

Odundo-Menzez, above, who is switching to the Winchester & District club to be closer to his coach John Davis, has no preference for one sport over the other just yet. He said: "I want to enjoy as much as I can of both until I have to choose between them

"I broke my ankle last year playing rugby and the year before I had appendicitis. I've had a torrid time getting back fit again, but I've decided to take on athletics properly."

That much was evident at Portsmouth's Mountbatten Centre on Saturday where Odundo-Mendez, running for Lord Wandsworth College, smashed the 200m Championship best for under-17 men in his heat.

Leaving Team Solent's Pritpal Chana well over a second in his wake, he scrubbed Basingstoke & Mid Hants' emerging 400m talent Robert Tobin out of the record books with a time of 22.31 seconds.

He was slower in the final, clocking 22.44 in chilly, damp conditions, but still claimed gold ahead of his future Winchester clubmate Louis Sellers (23.15), who is only a bottom year under-17.

Odundo-Mendez made it a double on Sunday, winning the 100m final in 11.07 to improve the 1974 championship best mark of 11.1.

Despite the lack of a track in the cathedral city, Winchester sprint coach Davis and his wife Debbie have a whole army of speed machines powering through.

Their son Kieran took under-13 boys' 100/200m gold while, at under-15 level, clubmate Tewala Bradshaw led the way in both short sprints.

Another youngster with his foot in two sporting camps was Team Solent's Tommy Davies. Along with older brothers, Sam and James, he had a talent for basketball with Solent Stars, but it is distance running that has won the 17-year-old over.

Earlier this year he was crowned AAA national indoor under-20 champion over 3,000m in Birmingham and, after winning county gold over the same distance at Portsmouth on Saturday, he smiled: "The AAA indoors was my first major title - and hopefully it's not the last."

Faced with old rivals David Udal and James Ellis of Aldershot, the Peter Symonds College student surged in front around the 2,000m-mark on Saturday to finish in 8.46.65. It was well outside his personal best, but enough to lift him to the top of the podium having finished runner-up last year.

Davies, who is hoping to study sports science at Loughborough, will now turn his attentions to the Southern Under-20 Championships at Watford in a fortnight's time.

One age-group below Davies, 16-year-old Titchfield Common lad Ben Harding is proving a hard act to beat in the middle distance department.

The Brookfield School pupil won Saturday's under-17 800m with a massive five seconds to spare and, in doing so, wiped out the 23-year-old championship best with new figures of 1.56.87.

It was a similar story of Harding domination in Sunday's 1500m final and this time his 4.02.17 run beat one of the longest standing county bests set by Andy Barnett way back in 1971.

The senior 800m crown went to Basingstoke & Mid-Hants' Terry Feasey, bronze medallist at the AAA Indoor Championships in March. But in a high-quality 1500m final, Feasey had to play second fiddle to Aldershot's Chris Thompson, who finished 19th in the World Cross-Country Short Course Championships.

An 18-month wrist injury has played havoc with Paul Thomas's promising pole vault career, but the Team Solent athlete hasn't let his talent go to waste.

Now coaching the event, the 22-year-old inspired two youngsters to gold on Saturday - and one of them, Andrew Guidi of Southampton City, equalled Thomas's 1993 championship best of two metres in the under-13 boys' event. The other, Becky Frampton, won the under-17 title with 1.95 - even though she is still an under-15 athlete.

FOR THE FULL LIST OF RESULTS FROM THE HAMPSHIRE TRACK & FIELD CHAMPIONSHIPS AND MORE PICTURES SEE TODAY'S DAILY ECHO (12 MAY)