DALE GARLAND’S joy is Tom Druce’s grief.

On the day Garland’s selection for the Great Britain team to compete at the World Indoor Championships in Doha was confirmed, Druce (pictured), who had harboured hopes of himself getting a place on the plane to Qatar, was feeling let down and a shade angry.

‘Whichever kind of way I look at it, I’m kind of aggrieved,’ he said, his annoyance stemming not so much from missing out on GB’s six-man 4x400m relay team having posted the fifth fastest time in the UK this year, but the manner in which the decision was made.

His biggest bugbear is the way he was dumped into the very handicapping lane one position in the selection run-off at the all-British Aviva Grand Prix 400m race in Birmingham last Saturday.

‘I was aggrieved about the lane one situation because up to that race I had the season’s best time of the guys in that field.’

Rather than conduct a fair draw of lanes, he claimed the contenders were placed in lanes and the coach of one of those runners, Nick Leavey, had a say in that draw.

‘He had a vested interest to get his man in the team. He was in lane six and I was in one.’

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