Pressure on Team GB to win 7 medals at Worlds

BRITISH ATHLETICS have been set a tough target of at least seven medals at the World Championships this year. Performance director Neil Black has previously been reluctant to discuss the requirements they are handed by funding agency UK Sport, but Sportsmail can reveal that this year’s expectation for Doha is for between seven and nine podium finishes. It is an increase from the six-to-eight target for London in 2017. The British team only scraped to the lower end of that range thanks to four relay medals, added to the gold and silver won by Mo Farah. UK Sport’s £23million four-year investment in British Athletics is third to cycling and rowing. The sport’s funding levels can be reduced if targets are not achieved in Doha in September. The target is identical to what was set for the Rio Olympics, at the peak of the last funding cycle, but British Athletics are in a better place than they were post-London 2017. The inquest into those championships focused on the absence of individual medallists beyond Farah. However, sprinter Dina Asher-Smith (right) has since won three golds at the 2018 European Championships. Katarina Johnson-Thompson took heptathlon silver at the Europeans, and European 1500 metres champion Laura Muir is arguably the most talented of the squad. Muir is yet to decide between the 1500m or 5,000m for Doha, as the schedule prevents her doubling up. Aside from the relays, there will also be a realistic medal hope from Farah, who is weighing up a track return in the 10,000m ahead of running the marathon in Tokyo, and potential in sprinters Reece Prescod and Zharnel Hughes. Irrespective of UK Sport’s raised target, Black has given his leading athletes freedom to skip Doha so as not to compromise their Olympic preparations for Tokyo, as revealed by Sportsmail last week. With the Tokyo Olympics in July, it gives athletes a turnaround after Doha of six weeks less than normal in the cycle, and their top-level athletes have been told that although competing in Doha is preferable, it is not essential.