Sprint star Burnside equals Scottish record

CAPITAL ace Susan Burnside (Edinburgh Woollen Mill) equalled Mel Neef’s Scottish National Indoor record of 7.36 secs in finishing fourth in the 60 metres at the Norwich Union International at Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall.

Her time, which gave her a share of a national mark also held by former clubmate Aileen McGillivary, sliced 0.01secs off her personal best.

Scotland’s only representative in yesterday’s meeting, Burnside had earlier made a highly-satisfactory GB debut by placing third in the 200 metres in 23.90, her second-fastest time indoors and only 0.05secs slower than her personal best.

"I really enjoyed it and I ran well - that’s the main thing," said Burnside.

The Ukraine’s world outdoor 100m champion Zhanna Block, who was representing the European Select, powered away to win in 7.09 with the Russian Marina Kislova second and Burnside’s British rival Joyce Maduaka third in 7.25.

The target for the Scottish sprinter between now and the World Championships trials in a month’s time will be to cut the gap between herself and Maduaka.

Meanwhile, Russian Svetlana Feofanova delighted a capacity 3500 crowd when she broke her own world indoor pole vault record by one centimetre.

Her clearance of 4.76 metres was the first world record set at the Scottish venue since Colin Jackson equalled the 60m hurdles record in February 1994 and it earned the 22-year-old a $50,000 (35,000) bonus and the athlete-of-the-meeting award.

Jackson, meanwhile, celebrated with a victory in his record 70th international appearance and last in Scotland, where he is adored by the crowds.

Targeting the world indoors in Birmingham before he finally retires the 35-year-old Welshman, who still holds the world record at 7.30 secs, won the 60m hurdles in 7.55, helping Britain to the narrowest of team wins over Russia, with the European Select a further one point behind, Sweden fourth and Italy fifth.

Britain’s Jason Gardener was also running for Europe but made his point to the selectors by beating British team-mate Mark Lewis-Francis in 6.52, the fastest time in the world so far this year.

Marlon Devonish won the 200m while 400m runner Daniel Caines clocked the fastest time in the world so far this year (45.81) in beating GB team-mate Jamie Baulch, who was representing Europe.

In the men’s and women’s 1500m, Michael East and Kelly Holmes both won, with the latter clocking an indoor personal best of 4:12.50.

But rusty Jonathan Edwards had problems with his run-up in the triple jump and allowed Sweden’s European champion Christian Olsson to take first blood in their head-to-heads for 2003 with a leap of 17.15m.