£1,500 taxi ride in the snow pays off for Muir
LAURA MUIR took a thrilling 3,000m bronze medal in the world indoor championships last night, despite the snow storm which is currently gripping Scotland playing havoc with her preparations. She only arrived in Birmingham at 11pm on the eve of the competition after being forced to take a £1,500, seven-hour taxi ride from Glasgow. And although her drive through the snow to the start line was left perilously late, so was her run to the finish. Doing it the hard way, both in the logistics of her journey and then in the race itself, the 24-year-old Scot was down in fifth with only three circuits of the 200m track to go. But in a quite brilliant finish, she passed Konstanze Klosterhalfen and Hellen Obiri, the world 5,000m champion, to take her first medal on the global stage. Genzebe Dibaba of Ethiopia won gold and Holland’s Sifan Hassan
silver. It was a stunning result for Muir, who cemented her status as Britain’s leading talent with two European indoors gold medals in 2017 but whose 2018 has largely been geared towards completing her veterinary training at Glasgow University. She was studying as recently as Wednesday morning, which led to her mad dash to make the start line, but what an impact she made on arrival against one of the toughest fields in the sport. Muir, who clocked a season’s best eight minutes and 45,78 seconds, said: ‘I was so hurting and I just had to dig deep. ‘To get a European medal was brilliant. But to get a worlds third in that field, I am very happy.’ Muir set the pace from the start, but began to drop back with six laps to go only to break away with Dibiba and Hassan, with the trio finishing well clear of the rest of the chasing pack. Her team-mate and fellow Scot Eilish McColgan came tenth. Muir will have another medal chance in the 1500m, with the heats today ahead of Saturday’s final. She will miss the Commonwealth Games on Gold Coast next month as she focuses on her final veterinary exams. Earlier, Britain’s Morgan Lake cleared 1.93m in the high jump but lost a bronze medal on countback to Italy’s Alessia Trost, while Robbie Grabarz was a disappointing ninth in the men’s event. Meanwhile, British javelin coach David Burrell, 53, has been suspended for four years for ‘evading, refusing or failing to submit’ to a drugs test.