Athletics: Baillie and McConnell chip in with wins but Cobras team comes up short

Wins by team captains Chris Bailllie and Lee McConnell could not lift Glasgow Cobras above fourth in the McCain Inter-City Indoor athletics challenge in Sheffield yesterday.

The two former Commonwealth Games silver medallists were in splendid form, Baillie taking the 60 metres hurdles in 7.84 seconds and McConnell, despite protesting she hates running indoors, the 200m in 23.74sec.

Eighteen-year-old Guy Learmonth (Lasswade) again showed he is ready to challenge the very best despite his years, being beaten by a mere 200ths of a second by the UK Indoor senior champion Londoner Andrew Osagie, but taking the scalps of several older and faster runners including his conqueror of the previous weekend in Cardiff, Welshman Joe Thomas.

Learmonth clocked 1:50.82 to Osagie's 1:50.00. "It's a great confidence booster for next weekend (UK Championships)," said the Loughborough University student. Another runner-up with his third personal best in a row was Capital long jumper Allan Hamilton with a leap of 7.22m, a 7cm improvement.

Emma Nuttall (EAC) was third in the high jump (1.73m) while David Smith, though only fourth, set a new PB of 2.17m, the best Scottish high jump for several years.