Inside track: Scott confident Edinburgh can raise bar in Lee Valley

Edinburgh ATHLETIC CLUB travel to London's Lee Valley later today for tomorrow's UK Women's League Premier Division final match, safe in the knowledge that their top-flight status is probably secure for another season, as they are currently joint fourth out of eight.

But team manager Anne Scott is quietly confident the Capital side may do better than that: "I actually think we'll field our strongest team of the season and we'll be stronger than we were for our home match.

"Even though the others may well be stronger too, I'd like to think we can finish fourth overall."

With at least three of the team turning down the chance to compete for Scotland in Belgium tomorrow, it is no wonder that Scott is pleased with the club spirit.

Captain Susan McKelvie, who has been a model of consistency this season and is surely due a breakthrough, is back in the hammer along with her able back-up Hannah Evenden.

Emma Nuttall, third in the Uk Championships last weekend and Jayne Nisbet, who was fifth, will provide a powerful duo for the high jump and, with Beth Finlayson and Carly Sharp covering the sprints, Stacey Downie is free to tackle the 400 metres as well as the 200m.

Scott believes Emily Dudgeon is another on the verge of better things, in her case a sub-2:10.00 800m run.

Sarah Warnock and Lisa Ferguson are also back together in the horizontal jumps and Sarah Hood, fresh from her UK Championship steeplechase bronze, is in the 1500m with Laura Dunn, while Emily Stewart goes in the 3000m. The club's top 800m runner Lynsey Sharp (EAC) may run a leg of the 4x400m relay tomorrow but her mind is first on tonight's Aviva Grand Prix at Crystal Palace where the European Under-23 bronze medallist, fourth in last weekend's trials, could yet clinch a place in the World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, at the end of this month.

Pitreavie's Eilidh Child is another Scot to have been allocated a lane at the Palace in what is the biggest domestic meeting of the season.

Still to achieve the 400m hurdles A qualifying standard of 55.40 for Daegu, Child believes she is in shape to break her own Scottish record of 55.16, given the right conditions.

"It's a really good field," she said yesterday.

Perri Shakes-Drayton, who beat her for the hurdles title in Birmingham on the way to an impressive hurdles-flat 400m double, is also in the race, which pleases Child: "I always run well against her."

Lasswade's talented teenager Guy Learmonth is another to have turned down the trip to Belgium. Instead he heads up the road from his home in Berwick to Tweedbank tomorrow for the Border Games there.