Rejuvenated Twell turns attentions to 1500m

Eighteen months have passed since Steph Twell broke her ankle in a cross-country race in Belgium. It cost her the whole of last summer and shattered the momentum generated by her 1500metres bronze medal at the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

At a low-key meeting at Stanford University in California last week, the 22-year-old made her return and surprised even herself by picking up where she had left off. Running over 5000m, very much her secondary event, the Scotland international secured the Olympic qualifying standard with a time of 15 minutes 15.24 seconds. It is early days but these are promising signs. “I’m not going to get complacent,” Twell said. “I know it doesn’t get me selection for the team. But it does give me more freedom.”

Hence, achieving excellence over 1500m will now consume her, starting with Friday’s Diamond League meeting in Doha, Qatar.

“The last race was the Commonwealth Games,” she said. “So to compete at that level after the year I’ve had, and to be within a sight of where I had been, is great. I now have that freedom and confidence that there’s a lot more to come.”

Twell is in London this weekend to take in the British student championships that are doubling up as athletics’ Olympic test event. Superstitiously, she opted out of competing on the Stratford track. “But I’ll do my warm-up, look at how the stadium is set up, just go through the drills of preparing.”

Such details, she hopes, will give her an edge come July. Twell is too astute to take her place in Team GB for granted. However as she watched last year’s world championships unfold from afar, she was uplifted rather than disheartened. “If anything, it’s been a real eye opener to what I can achieve,” she revealed. “It was a good year for Hannah England. Seeing her get that silver gives me confidence that if someone running for Britain can achieve that, so can I.”