£54M TO STAND STILL

Jess coach blasts GB performance but team boss vows: We WILL get it right

TEAM boss Neil Black has defended Britain’s results at the World Athletics Championships in London after they finished two places lower than in Beijing two years ago.

Black’s 80-plus athletes – set a target of six medals by UK Sport – had just one in the bag by 8.20pm on the penultimate evening.

A late surge of a second gong for Mo Farah and medals in all four relays saw them achieve that target and sixth place in the table.

But of those six, four came in the relays and two went to Farah. Nobody else made the podium in an individual event – despite high hopes for rising stars such as Laura Muir and Katarina Johnson-thompson.

Also on the charge sheet is the fact that

British athletics has received £53,960,451 of lottery funding in the five years since the London Olympics.

Toni Minichiello

(right, below), who coached Jess Ennis-hill to greatness, said: “I hate the attitude that everything is great. It’s been good not great. We’ve been investing heavily in standing still.” No wonder team boss Black was “nervous” and “aware of people’s views”. Black (left, above) said: “I understand that people will go, ‘who is going to replace Mo and Greg Rutherford and Jess’.

“My answer is that we are looking to produce a team of athletes capable of performing at this level.we believe we have multiple individual medallists to come.

“And we are absolutely going to nail the relays – global competition after global competition.”

GB’S record at recent World Championships: G2 S3 B1 Total 6 G4 S1 B2 Total 7 G3 S1 B2 Total 6 G3 S3 B2 Total 8 G2 S2 B3 Total 7 G1 S1 B4 Total 6 CRYING SHAME KJT and Muir (below) were big medal hopes for Team GB, but they blew their chance on the...