Delhi Games qualifiers are seeking reversal of fortune

JUST four years before the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, when athletics will be expected to deliver medals to a home crowd hungry for podium success, things are at a low ebb for the sport.

This October, the 2010 Games in Delhi should have been the ideal chance to blood some young talent but, unless there are some dramatic happenings this weekend, it looks as though just 16 athletes, eight men and eight women, will have fulfilled the strict selection criteria by the time of the qualifying deadline on Sunday.

Of those 16, a worrying number are injured, not in form or even in one or two cases uncertain they want to go.

Biggest worry from a Capital standpoint is the state of health of the two locally-trained hammer throwers, Scottish champion Mark Dry and runner-up Andy Frost, who between them have notched up more qualifying marks than the rest of the contenders put together and, fully fit, are probably our best medal hopes.

But both were well below their best at the National Championships and Dry has now revealed that he has been diagnosed with glandular fever while Frost has been carrying a leg injury incurred in a freak accident getting out of his car.

"I must admit it's knocked me for six," said Dry of his illness.

"If I don't rest now Delhi will be a write-off."

Dry went on: "Everyone seems to think I've just magically got rubbish but my season was going really well with a personal best until I got this."

"I'll be back for Delhi," promised Dry, who is recuperating at his parents' home near RAF Kinloss in Morayshire.

It is a safe assumption that not one male track athlete will be chosen for events up to and including 800 metres and the only female sprinter to have qualified, Lee McConnell, who has the necessary times for both 200 and 400 metres, looked really out of sorts in her heat of the 400m in the European Championships in Barcelona this week.

Dunfermline and West Fife's Scottish champion Gemma Nicol, despite a welcome return to the sort of form she first showed to make the 2002 Games team, is still over a second outside the 400 target of 52.25 and decided against going to Eton for the UK Women's League because of a strained hamstring she picked up at the Birmingham Games last weekend.

With McConnell, Pitreavie 400m hurdler Eilidh Child, who has excelled in reaching the European final in Barcelona and is a shoo-in for Delhi, possibly 800m qualifier Claire Gibson and Nicol, Scotland could have had the basis of a reasonable 4x400m team.

But that looks unlikely now.

At least Freya Murray (Edinburgh AC) is a certainty for the side having fulfilled the obligation of two qualifying times for the 5000m as well as one in the 10,000, as is Midlands-based pole vaulter Hen Paxton. But Aldershot's Steph Twell is delaying a decision on Delhi until after she competes in the 1500 in Barcelona this weekend.

Angus McInroy (Helensburgh) in the discus and James Campbell (Cheltenham) in the javelin have both bagged Scottish records this season and have the potential to throw much farther and even medal.

Grangemouth's Richard Hurren has notched the necessary heights in the pole vault, though currently recovering from injury.

But the former Edinburgh AC hurdler-jumper Ali Strange, now competing for an English club, is one of those needing a reprieve as he chases a second pole vault standard of 5.20m.