Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Bobby happy in senior spotlight
Athletics
Bobby Clay says her taste of the senior British Athletics Championships final and the Olympic Trials have made her thirsty for more.
In her first senior championships at Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium, the 19-year-old from Wingham eased through Saturday’s women’s 1,500m heats in fourth place to qualify for Sunday’s final.
On the same track that she stormed to a new personal best time of 4min 10.61sec in the Diamond League earlier this month, she faced Britain’s elite runners on a blustery day and after a cat-and-mouse race, the Invicta East Kent AC member stopped the clock in 4.17.69, seven seconds behind winner Laura Muir who joins second-placed Laura Weightmann in Rio in August.
Clay said: “It was an interesting race but it’s more experience for me. It didn’t go how I expected it to and ended the race more confused than anything.
“I assumed because people needed times that someone would take the race on but on paper it was definitely a slow race.
“It ended up with me seven seconds off my PB and the rest of them were around 10 seconds.”
The former Sir Roger Manwood’s School pupil added: “I was so boxed in. There was no way over and I had no way out. In the juniors, someone might have made a little bit of room for me, there is always a way out.
“These girls had me boxed in and just weren’t going to move.
“I was pleased with the way I dealt with it. I felt like the baby out there but I needed that. It will be good for me.
“I am so used to getting my own way in the juniors. It showed to me that I have not established myself in the senior field yet.”
Clay is part of the British team heading for the World Junior Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland, from July 19-24 and she admitted: “It was probably good for me to get knocked about before then because these Europeans and Africans are not going to be as polite as the girls here, either.
“I need to watch it back a couple more times and my coach (Rob Denmark) will do the same to work out what went well and what needs work.
“It was good for me that I’d done what I needed to do the previous weekend, I had secured my Worlds place.
“It was nice to be part of the final and to be a part of trials, to be competing against girls that are out there trying to qualify for an Olympic Games. In four years’ time, I want that to be me.”