Hughes forgives Olympic doper Ujah

AS he begins his mission to make up for lost prizes, Zharnel Hughes says he has forgiven the doper who cost him his Olympic silver medal. Hughes, who breezed through the 100m heats at the British Championships in Manchester last night, was among the innocents with Richard Kilty and Nethaneel MitchellBlake who were stripped of their 4x100m relay medals when CJ Ujah tested positive for drugs in Tokyo. After clocking 10.18sec to win his heat and qualify second quickest for today’s semi-finals, the European champion broke his silence on the darkest episode in British Olympic history. While Kilty has been scathing of Ujah, Hughes struck a more surprising tone in saying: ‘What do you want to hear? CJ is a great guy, regardless. What happened to him is unfortunate, sadly. ‘But I don’t show him any disrespect. I haven’t spoken to him in a long time but, the last time I spoke to him, he apologised and said sorry. ‘I forgive him. Sometimes these things do happen, which is very sad in his case, but I wish him all the best in the future. I can’t change anything. It’s already gone. We’ve been removed from the history books. It’s sad — but I can’t do anything about it.’ Meanwhile, Laura Muir has warned her rivals she’s ‘pretty close’ to 100 per cent with just four weeks to go until the world championships in Oregon. The Olympic silver medallist is hot favourite to claim the UK women’s 1500 metres title in Manchester today after winning her heat last night by a margin of six seconds. Back to her best following a hip injury, the Scot said: ‘It’s an opportunity for another race, I’ve not raced much in the last year or so. It’s a chance to try out a couple of different things. My training has been going really well.’