The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Big night ahead for Scottish athletes at London World Championships
Doyle leads medal push on busy night in London
Scotland’s Andrew Butchart looked up to the leaden skies before his steeplechase heat last night and smiled: ‘It feels like home’.
While every race was reduced to a splash and dash at London’s World Championships yesterday – the steeplechase water jump even burst it banks over the infield – Scottish athletes are preparing for their big night.
And, as rivals from around the world shiver in their bobble hats under umbrellas and snuggled in thick coats, they are ready to seize their chance.
Team captain Eilidh Doyle was the eighth fastest qualifier to the women’s 400m hurdles final while Laura Muir, Eilish McColgan and Steph Twell all go in the women’s 5,000m heats.
Then there is Commonwealth silver medallist Lynsey Sharp in the women’s 800m and Chris O’Hare over 1500m.
It’s the busiest night of the games for the record 13-strong Scottish contingent in the British team here and, for McColgan, this event will always have special significance.
She was just a toddler when mother Liz produced a stunning run to win the 1991 10,000m world title in Tokyo.
McColgan, at the urging of her mum, has quit the steeplechase to focus on 5,000m this season. And that switch in focus was rewarded when she erased 12 seconds off her 3,000m personal best at the Diamond League meeting in Monaco.
But the best medal chance will be fellow Dundee Hawkhill Harrier Muir, still smarting from her near miss over 1500m.
She is playing down expectations, pointing out her inexperience over the distance but arguably the field won’t be as stacked as Monday night’s ubercompetitive final. Plus, rather than setting the pace, she can sit back and be hunter rather than the hunted, relying on her blistering finishing pace.
“The 5,000 is more unpredictable for me,” said the Milnathort runner.
“I’m less experienced in that event. I’ve only done it twice and one was four years ago. I’ll see how I feel and hopefully I can run well, but it is still a new event for me.”
South Africa’s Caster Semenya, the athlete who beat Muir into 1500m bronze, was unbeaten for almost two years over two laps until her recent defeat to Burundi’s Francine Niyonsaba in Monaco.
Only the first three qualify from each of tonight’s heats but Sharp has the second fastest season’s best in her lineup, which includes Kenya’s Margaret Wambui, the Olympic bronze medallist from Rio.
Sharp was eliminated in the semifinals two years in Beijing but certainly has the class to better father Cameron, who was a semi-finalist in the 100 and 200 metres at Helsinki in 1983.
Coach Terrence Mahon jokes his charge likes a crisis and Sharp is never far from controversy when she’s on the big stage, though this time is seeking to make only positive headlines.
Her breakthrough silver at European Championships five years ago became a gold after discrepancies were found in the biological passport of winner Elena Arzhakova, while her subsequent selection for the Olympics a few weeks later, ahead of athletes with quicker times, became a major talking point.
At last year’s Olympics Sharp – who always answers questions thoughtfully and honestly, even if it then causes trouble – was embroiled in a row after comments she made about Semenya, a hyperandrogenic athlete with high levels of testosterone.
And then, of course, there was the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, when she climbed off her sickbed to produce a battling podium finish, driven on by a famous Hampden roar.
“I can’t wait to get out there and experience a home crowd, the last time I had that sort of support was in Glasgow and it makes a big difference,” she said.
“I’ve been lucky to enough to compete at a home Olympics, home Commonwealth Games and now home World Championships, it’s an incredible experience but it’s about learning to cope with the pressure that brings too.”