This Is Guernsey

DALE GARLAND’S indoor season is over before it had barely started.

The Olympic 400m hurdles hope has been told to forget about any more indoor competition this winter as the Guernsey athlete struggles to recover from the quad injury he picked up at the start of the month.

It means he now misses the world indoor championships in Valencia next month, having held realistic hopes of retaining his position in the Great Britain 4 x 400m men’s relay squad which won last year’s European title.

‘Malcolm [Arnold, his coach] has decided it is best I don’t do the indoors this year,’ said Garland from his Bath base.

‘It’s a shame, but at least I can focus on the summer now.’

Garland says he is on the verge of full fitness again having not been able to train properly for three weeks due to a torn quad muscle in his thigh.

At the time he said it was not too serious and would not set him back long-term, but it was bad enough for him to miss the national championships and world trials event in Sheffield.

Before the injury, signs were good for a successful 2008 and that meant a place in the British team for the Beijing Olympics. He is still ranked four in the UK for the flat four.

‘It’s Olympic year and everything is geared around the Olympics.’

He needs to take a further half-second off his island record and PB for 400 hurdles to achieve the A-standard qualification time for Beijing. The 2007 national 400m hurdles champion is also hoping to win a place in the 400m relay squad.

Meanwhile, Garland is committed to appearing in front of a local crowd at the first of this year’s Fortis Golden Series meetings on Wednesday 14 May, as is fellow Bath-based one-lap runner Tom Druce, who is experiencing his own injury problems.

Since running a personal best 48.14 at the Birmingham Games at the start of February, a run which put him in the higher reaches of the national rankings, Druce has been affected by a niggling hamstring injury and has not competed again.

He will not now run competitively until the British Universities indoor championships in the middle of March.