Former Commonwealth Games competitor and now grade 1 race walking judge, Steve Taylor (pictured above by Murray Lambden on Wednesday of this week), has been invited to officiate at two international events to be held at the Manchester Regional Arena (Sportcity) in July. The events are expected to include athletes from Germany, Italy, Australia, Norway, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and of course the UK.

The facility was originally used as the warm up track for the 2002 Commonwealth Games since then it has undergone an upgrade including the addition of over 6000 seats making it a state of the art stadium for athletics. The Olympic Trials and AAA Championships will also be held at the stadium making this the venue to be at during July.

Steve's invitation comes on the back of the news that he has been selected as one of only a handful of judges to be placed on an upgrade programme to become an international level 2 judge by the UK Athletics Race Walking Policy and Support Team (PST).

Read what Steve had to say about the Manx 10km Track Championships (below)

19 starters was indeed an impressive site on the track and possibly the  best turn out ever (best since I have been keeping check).

Steve  Partington's winning time is the fastest by a Manxman for over two years.

Peter Kaneens' 5km split is a new veterans mens record. His 5th vets  record this year.

Sean Hands fought hard to hang on to Allan Callow and indeed caught and passed him by the end and was rewarded with a huge pb, smashing through the 55 minute barrier recording the sort of time that I have been predicting for him for over 12 months now. For me the performance of the night and there were plenty to choose from.

Les Brown, who I don't think ever looked up from start to finish, also smashed his pb by nearly 4 minutes.

Robert Moore was only just outside her best ever 3km (although he doesn't race it that often now) and shows that he has fully recovered from the  illness that has dogged him for the best part of a year.

Lauren Whelan set a new under 13 track record for 3km breaking the old mark by 3 and a half minutes. Her time would have placed her 6th in the under 15 at the recent National Championships in Leamington but she still has another year at under 13!!

Fay Latham set a new under 13 track record for 2km breaking the old mark by 2 and a half minutes since 2002.