Scots athletes in running as GB team to be named

FORMER Edinburgh University fitness expert Dave Collins was due to deliver the fate of several anxious Scots today when the British team is announced for the World Championships in Helsinki from August 6 to 14.

Collins, now boss of British athletics, will have had some difficult decisions to make along with his fellow selectors, for not one of the borderline Scots improved his or her position in late bids for qualification standards at the weekend.

Only Lee McConnell can be guaranteed a place and that will probably be only in the 4 x 400 metres relay, after the long-legged Glaswegian once again failed to master the tricky technique of her new event, the 400m hurdles and came third in 56.47 seconds, well outside her World target time of 55.60secs, in a race in Brasschaat, Belgium yesterday.

She may not have been helped by the fact that the meeting was delayed for an hour by rain, but that did not prevent Edinburgh Southern's Freya Murray setting a personal best of 4:15.85 in the 1500m, exactly a second faster than she ran in the same meeting last year.

That earned the Heriot Watt University student, whose own target is the Commonwealth Games time of 4:13.50, sixth place behind Motherwell's Susan Scott, who was third in 4:10.50, a performance well outside the Helsinki standard.

Scott was left to hope that the selectors would look favourably on her 800m claims, where she is AAA champion and has the World B time.

Capital hammer star Shirley Webb failed to reach the World A standard or improve on her own Scottish record in Leverkusen, Germany, coming second with 65.04m behind Germany's Suzanne Keil (69.00m).

She had wanted to throw 69.50m.

However, she could still be named for Helsinki as she has achieved the B standard of 67.00m.

Edinburgh Southern thrower Susan McKelvie was also below target in Heuseden, Belgium, where she reached 55.12m in fourth place in quest of the Commonwealth Games qualifying standard of 60.00m.

McKelvie improved to 57.96m in winning at Grangemouth yesterday where ESH clubmate Hayley Ovens made a long-awaited comeback after injury to win the 800 in 2:07.40.

SCOTLAND'S Morag MacLarty (Central) scored another stunning success when she captured the European Junior 1500m title in Kaunas, Lithuania yesterday to add to the Commonwealth Youth Games title she won in Australia last December.

In a blanket finish in which the first four runners all set personal best times, the 19-year-old Dundee University medical student smashed her best time by over five seconds to snatch the verdict in 4:15.12.