Kieran Wood clinches podium place at Southeastern Conference Indoor Track Championships

Kieran Wood’s impact in the US shows no sign of slowing down after his performances at the Southeastern Conference Indoor Track Championships.

The 23-year-old Cambridge & Coleridge AC member won a bronze medal in the mile at the event in Arkansas.

Wood is studying on an athletics scholarship at the University of Missouri, and the SEC is a collection of colleges which includes many of the most competitive track and field programmes in the US.

In the preliminaries, Wood was the fourth quickest in 4min 12.77sec, for second in his heat.

And in the final, he finished third in 4.04.05, with Ole Miss’ Waleed Suliman winning in 4.02.47 and Arkansas’ Cameron Griffith second in 4.04.50.

It is another sign of how quickly Wood has settled into his new environment.

Prior to the weekend, he had raced in three individual events during the season and set Missouri school records in each on.

Missouri distance coach Marc Burns told the Columbia Daily Tribune: “When he came back (from winter break), the first couple weeks of practice, we were like, ‘man, he’s gonna do something really special.

“It was just a matter of getting him in the right races. He’s responded. Three races, three school records.”

Despite running a sub-four minute mile, Wood is on the edge of qualifying for the nationals. He is 20th in the country, but only the top 16 qualify. However, it has certainly been a promising adjustment for Wood.