byStuart Weir
British Mascot, with handler, Rachel, 2018 British Trials, Birmingham, England, 1 July 2018, photo by Stuart Weir
Birmingham Stadium view, 1 July 2018, photo by Stuart Weir
This is the first article from Day 2 of the 2018 British Outdoor Trials, from Birmingham, England. Stuart speaks about the men’s 1,500m championships here.
British Athletics is alive and well
British Athletics is alive and well is the clear message to emerge from a set of high quality finals on the second day of the Műller British Athletics Championships in Birmingham, which also act as selection trials not only for the European Championships in August, but also for the GB team for the inaugural World Cup in two weeks.
Let’s start with the men’s 1500m. We should have known that the race was going to be a bit special when we recalled yesterday’s prelims which had two unusual occurrences. First of all there was a dead heat between two athletes. Neil Gourley and Josh Kerr were each given the time of 3:46.22 and could not be separated even to the thousandths of the second!
Then there was Dominic Brown who dropped out of his prelim yesterday after he was hit by an advertising board, which was picked up by the strong wind. He was correctly re-instated. Check for yourself IAAF rule 431, sub-section A4 which governs athletes being hit by flying advertising boards on a Saturday afternoon. Brown duly finished10th in the final.
Chris O’Hare, Jake Wightman, 2018 New Balance Indoor GP, “Deja vu all over again” (attributed to American baseball philosopher/catcher Yogi Berra), photo by PhotoRun.net
The race was won by Chris O’Hare (3:46.72) from Jake Wightman (3:46.86) with Neil Gourley third in 3.46.87. That was a Scottish 1,2,3. And a 1,2, 5 (Josh Kerr) for the Edinburgh Athletic Club.
O’Hare said afterwards: “It feels great. It’s always tough. You are standing there in the call room and you are thinking ‘alright, there’s a lot of guys in here to worry about’. It’s tough, but last year I had a bit of a hamstring issue in the warm-up and my coach said to me ‘look, here’s the deal’ you don’t need to be 100 percent. If someone is 100 percent, they are going to win. So just take care of your own race and execute your race plan and that’s all you can do. I just held that in mind this year and it worked.
“I felt great. Training has really clicked the last couple of years. It feels good to be walking away from sessions strong, rather than always having to tell myself ‘it was OK, but I will have a good one in a couple of weeks'”.
It was a happy ending to a frustrating 2018 for O’Hare. He started the year in excellent form indoor, only to pick up an injury just before the World Indoors. While he ran in the Worlds and also in the Commonwealth Games, he was nowhere near his best in either event.
In Oslo he failed to get a place in the Dream Mile, shrugged his shoulders and went out and won the 1500m which was also in Bislett program. If he stays fit, he will be a force at the European Champs. That the first four were separated by 0.27 of a second shows the strength in depth of GB middle distance running.
