The reigning European 60m champion, Richard Kilty, has urged selectors to keep their faith in him after he suffered his fifth false start in two years at the British Indoor trials in Sheffield.
Kilty, who also won the world 60m indoor title in 2014, was an overwhelming favourite to gain automatic selection for the European Indoor Championships in Serbia next month, after qualifying fastest from the heats and semi-finals. Yet in the final, he jumped the gun – and ended up disqualified for the second year in a row at this event.
“I’ve been stupid,” said Kilty. “My coach told me: ‘Wait for the gun. Even if they’re ahead at 30m, you’ve got the speed to come through’ – but I wanted to run a really, really fast time.”
Andrew Robertson earned the one automatic qualifying place for the championships in Belgrade by winning the final in 6.57sec, with Theo Etienne second and the 38-year-old Dwain Chambers third. But Kilty hopes a fast time in Birmingham next weekend will earn him one of the two remaining 60m spots in the British squad.
“Hopefully they will still select me,” the 27-year-old from Stockton-on-Tees added. “They know what I have done in the major championships before – that’s when I tend to pull it out. Hopefully this is the last of all this.”
Meanwhile, Andrew Pozzi reinforced his status as favourite for the European 60m hurdles title by equalling his own fastest time of the year as he won the British title. Pozzi ran his heat in an impressively smooth 7.44sec – and while his 7.53 in the final was more scratchy, he believes there is more to come. “I’m elated to be running these kind of times with quite big flaws, so hopefully they will continue to drop,” he said. “The main aim is victory in Belgrade.”
Pozzi, 24, who has had “five or six” operations on his foot after suffering a series of injuries since the London Olympic Games in 2012, added: “I’m really starting to feel more myself and my training schedule is beginning to resemble that of a normal athlete. I feel like I’m finally starting to do what I feel has been there for the last five or six years. It bodes well.”
In the women’s 800m, Shelayna Oskan-Clarke held off Adelle Tracey to win in a season’s best time of 2min 3.54sec, while the most dramatic finish of the day came in the women’s 3,000m event, where Eilish McColgan overcame a five-metre deficit on the final lap to pip Steph Twell to victory.
