Athletics: Learmonth gets his wish

Lasswade’s Guy Learmonth has been granted his wish for an invitation for the 800 metres in the Aviva Birmingham Grand Prix at the National Indoor Arena on Saturday.

Second to Joe Thomas (Cardiff) in the UK Indoor Championships and World Trials in Sheffield last weekend, the Loughborough student, 19, still needs to clock the qualifying time of 1min 48.0sec to join Thomas in the British team for Istanbul next month but he could not have asked for a better race.

“We’ve got what we wanted, a place in the race and the field must be one of the finest ever with Aman of Ethiopia, Kiplagat and Lalang of Kenya, Lewandowski of Poland, Sherer of the US and Thomas, Guy and Andrew Osagie of Britain,” said Learmonth’s coach Henry Gray, adding: “There’s sure to be a pacemaker so it’s up to Guy now.”