Athletics: Cooke swaps bob for sand to help club

WORLD bobsleigh champion Gillian Cooke returns to her first love, athletics, to help out her club Edinburgh AC in the second match of the UK Women's League first division at Manchester today.

Cooke is expected to compete in the long jump, in which she is second ranked Scot of all time, and sprint relay.

Sixth in the first match last month, Edinburgh have been hit by the fixture clash with the Flanders Cup meeting in Belgium today with high jumper Emma Nuttall and long jumper Sarah Warnock both competing there.

But the Capital side have been boosted by the return of Scottish high jump champion Jayne Nisbet, who will also compete in the triple jump, and will have strong pairings in the 400 metres (Kathryn Evans and Lynsey Sharp) and hammer (Susan McKelvie and Hannah Evenden).

"If it was a one-per-event cup match it would be perfect but we just don't have the depth to match the top clubs," said team manager Ann Scott, who is targeting sixth place or better for her side.

Eilidh Child's efforts in Madrid last night were hampered by a thunderstorm which caused the electrical timing to malfunction and delayed the meeting by two hours.

The Scottish champion, who is still recovering from the stomach bug which afflicted her while in Bergen for the European Team Championships, could finish only fourth in the 400 metres hurdles in 56.6 secs, over a second outside her recent Scottish record (55.17).

"The conditions were not good but no excuses, it was simply a bad run," said Child afterwards.