LEGAL EAGLE SETS THE PACE IN THE STANDARD CHARTERED CITY RACE
CAN ANYBODY stop Emily Wicks of Punter Southall?
Not content with fitting in extra study on top of her long-hours day job at the law firm, Wicks runs an average of 80 miles a week and represents Great Britain at cross country.
So it was no surprise that the trainee actuary won this year’s Standard Chartered Great City Race – the Square Mile’s biggest corporate challenge and Wicks’s “favourite event” – for the third year in a row, completing the 5k course in 16 minutes and 50 seconds.
Wicks was a minute ahead of the second-fastest female runner, Lara Bromilow of HSBC, and close behind the quickest male runners: Chris Busaileh of Speechly Bircham, who finished in 15 minutes and 35 seconds, and Standard Chartered’s Ben Shearer, who tied in second place with Paul Halford of Athletics Weekly at 15 minutes and 48 seconds.
The pace-setters were among 4,500 more mortal runners from 400 City firms who took part in last Thursday’s evening race to raise funds for Seeing Is Believing, the blindness charity backed by ambassador Sir Ranulph Fiennes (pictured right, centre, with Paralympian Noel Thatcher, left, and Standard Chartered’s CEO Richard Holmes).
Among their number was Joanna Vowles of Charles Stanley, who was part of the 25-strong team of Charles Stanley runners that also included her colleagues Alice Sharp, Rob Brooke, Lee Downes and Matt Lovell.
Vowles’s more human running time was 30 minutes – not bad, considering she and Sharp (far right) had done “no training at all”. “We just turned up on the day,” Vowles told The Capitalist. “But the race actually went a lot better than expected.”
MAN ABOUT TOWN
SPOTTED: John Tiner, the former chief executive of the FSA, driving past The Ritz in his Porsche 911 with the personalised number plate T1 NER.
How times have changed. It was not so long ago that Tiner, who left the regulator in 2009 to make serious money in the private sector, was reportedly so embarrassed by press reports of his personalised Porsche that he stowed it in the garage, switching to a more modest Suzuki for his public outings around town.
Looks like the Resolution chief executive has managed to get over those feelings of embarrassment after presiding over the acquisitions of Friends Provident and Axa’s UK business. Or perhaps the Suzuki was simply having its annual MOT. You decide…
TAKE THE HIGH ROAD
THEIR colleagues doubted whether they would make it back alive.
But “The Killik Six” all crossed the line in one piece after completing the Artemis Great Kindrochit Quadrathlon, swimming, running, kayaking and cycling their way around the Scottish Highlands to raise almost £6,000 for Mercy Corps, Mary’s Meals and The Gurkha Trust.
Starting with a 6am loch dip comparable to “the Titanic passengers being dispatched into the North Atlantic”, it wasn’t an average day for the Mayfair-based wealth managers, but the final 35-mile bike ride was “almost a pleasure”. Entertainingly, Killik’s Tim Shaw was so keen to finish he forgot to unclip from his bike pedals and fell over as he crossed the line.
CATCH OF THE DAY
CONTRARY to popular belief, there are still fish in the Thames – as proved by High Timber, which claims its diners caught five fish in 50 minutes only last week.
The fishing expedition is a part of a July promotion at the City restaurant, which is giving any customers who catch a fish a complimentary dish.
Not the fish they reel in using the rods installed on the restaurant’s terrace though – all captured species are returned alive to the river – but a “catch of the day” course cooked by head chef Justin Saunders.