STUBBINGTON Green Runners claimed a remarkable fourth successive win at the South Downs Relay.

On the hottest day of the year, the south coast club blazed a scorching trail across the 97-mile undulating course which took more than 40 teams from Beachy Head to Chilcomb at Winchester.

Each of the six-strong teams had to complete legs of between four and eight miles across some pretty tough terrain.

Conditions took their toll, and one runner from Brighton had to be airlifted to hospital after collapsing on the Downs. He was later discharged from hospital.

The Stubbington A team of Kiran Raval, Tor Duffin, Tony Allen, Andy Simpson, Mark Le Gassick and Ray Gunner enjoyed a 25-minute winning margin over Steyning, completing the course in ten hours 31 minutes, with Brighton-based Phoenix AC third.

Stubbington's B team just missed out on glory by three minutes, and so finished second in their category.

The six-strong team of Nick Crane, Phil May, Dave King, Jon Leigh, Andy James and Marcus Lee ran well to finish in 12hr 49min.

And the club's veterans' team of Chris Hall, Alisdair Ewing, John Exley, Mike Bainbridge, Steve Marshall and Chris Vernon also took silver, finishing second behind Chichester with a time of 11hr 44min.

Southampton Running Club, competing in their first South Downs Relay, finished sixth in the veterans' category with a time of 12hr 43min.

Meanwhile, in Dorset, Southampton Running Club's Andy Morgan-Lee clocked a superb time in the heat for the Poole Festival of Running 10km.

The 36-year-old finished second behind Poole-based Kenyan Willard Chinhanhu with a time of 30min 59sec, 48sec adrift of the winner.

Alton Runners' Toby Lambert was third (31:15) and New Forest Runners' Lee Rodriguez ninth (33:25).

British international Hayley Yelling, running for Windsor, Slough, Eton and Hounslow AC, won the women's race in 33:41, with Southampton RC's Nicola Blandford 11th in 42:33.