Athletics: Sharp focuses on outdoors as Child and Muir get GB places

EDINBURGH athlete Lynsey Sharp will not compete in any more indoor races this winter and so just two Scots, Eilidh Child (Pitreavie) and Laura Muir (Dundee Hawkhill), have been included in the Great Britain and Northern Ireland team for the European Indoor 
Athletics Championships in Sweden from March 1 to 3.

With so many athletes who had originally not intended going to Sweden changing their minds, it had been hoped that Sharp too might take up the place which her 800 metres qualifying time at last Sunday’s Birmingham Games had 
offered her.

The London 2012 Olympian, who won a European silver outdoors in Helsinki last year, is sticking to her guns: “This was just a bit of fun and I want to concentrate on training.”

Full-time athlete Child, who is now based in Bath, will run in both the individual 400m and 4x400m relay in Gothenburg following her exciting indoor season in which she first broke the Scottish Native indoor record (which has to be done by Scots in Scotland) then twice broke the Scottish National record and now stands as the fourth fastest Briton of all-time with her time of 51.50 secs.

Child joins fellow hurdler 
Perri Shakes-Drayton and Shana Cox in the individual spots.

Glasgow University vet 
student Muir will compete in the 1500m, having twice 
broken the qualifying standard of 4:14.0 in recent meetings, including winning the British trial at Sheffield.

Lasswade’s Guy Learmonth has again been unlucky in the men’s 800m selection, losing out to the two who finished ahead of him in the trials, Joe Thomas and Mukhtar Mohammed plus Michael Rimmer who, in his first indoor race of the season, won the invitation 800m in Birmingham in a 
qualifying time and promptly made himself available.

“What’s the point of having trials,” was Learmonth’s rueful comment.

The 20-year-old Loughborough student, however, has been invited to a top race in Stockholm tomorrow night when he hopes to reduce his best time even further from the 1:47.41 he clocked last Sunday.