Olympic dream becomes nightmare

By Rob Batiste

THE Olympic dream Dale Garland thought was his to fulfil, is over. His late bid to grab a vacant spot in Britain’s 4×400m relay squad for Beijing failed at the European Permit meeting in Loughborough yesterday afternoon.

Needing to post a lifetime 400m best of 46.2sec. or quicker, he ran out of steam to finish down a good-quality field in 47.4. ‘I got spanked,’ was his immediate reaction. ‘I just died. I had to work hard in the first 200 metres and just had nothing to give at all after that. I felt like I had zero fitness.’

Garland concedes the game is up for this Olympics, one which appeared in his grasp when just a month ago he headed the national 400m hurdles rankings and ran the second quickest of Britain’s 400 relay squad at the European Cup event in Annecy.

But shortly after that his old foe, the dodgy hamstring, returned to wreck his preparations for the run-in to China. Whether he will be as competitive in four years’ time when the Olympics go to London, is debatable.

By then he will be 32 and another generation of one-lap runners will be on the scene. One of them could just be Tom Druce, who was also in action at Loughborough and ran 47.07 for sixth place.

He, too, was disappointed and reckoned he had paid for a spell of hampered training due to a hamstring niggle.

‘I was running out of steam a bit,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t good weather but still, all a bit disappointing.’

But two Guernsey athletes who should be pleased with their day’s work were hurdler Kylie Robilliard and distance star Steve Dawes.

Robilliard made it through to the final of the 100m hurdles at Loughborough and clocked a season’s best 14.03, nearly two-tenths inside the Commonwealth Games qualifying time she set in May.

Back at Foote’s Lane, Dawes took more than eight seconds off his best for the 5,000 in finishing runner-up to Lee Merrien in the Healthspan Club Championship event.

Despite a stiff wind, Dawes clocked 15-18.6 to move up two places to seventh in the all-time Guernsey standings.

Article posted on 18th July, 2008 - 2.30pm

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