Under strength Sussex did well to finish sixth in the South of England inter-county cross country championships at Stowe.

In bitterly cold conditions, it was Brighton and Hove's Julia Downes who spearheaded the Sussex challenge in the absence of Arena 80 runners Caroline Hoyte and Worthing's Rachel Ogden.

For much of the race Downes was in the leading bunch but as the field stretched out she slipped a little off the pace to finish in an excellent ninth place.

Downes' finishing time of 23min.39sec was just 35 seconds down on race winner Sara-Jane Pickett, the former Horsham Blue Star runner who competes for Surrey.

After a rather slowish start to the cross country season Crawley's Fiona Clark seems to be returning to the kind of form she was showing a couple of seasons back and was pleased to finish in 18th place in 24min.15sec, an effort which also earned her a splendid fourth place in the under-23 championship which was held in conjunction.

With many of the Sussex under-23 men's team away at university, manager John Hopkins was unable to get any representatives to the under-23 championship.

There was some reflected success for Sussex however as the talented Paul Rodgers, who races for the Crawley club and won the recent Sussex League race at Lancing, had a fine run to take the silver medal.

Rodgers clocked 32min.13sec for the 10km course, just seven seconds behind Middlesex winner Scott Overall.

The home club's Darrell Smith romped away from a large field to record a convincing victory in the tough Crowborough 10km road race.

The quality of this event has dropped a little in recent years but the long steep climb from the bottom of the course back to the finish makes it a really testing race for all athletes.

Smith took control before the halfway mark and put more than one minute between himself and second placed Jeff Simpson from Fittleworth in 33min.21sec.

In the women's race Gill Wheeler, from Hailsham, continued her good season by crossing the finishing line in 41min.02sec, nearly 100 metres clear of South London's Gill O'Connor in second.