Marc Austin has admitted that the meteoric rise of training partner Grant Sheldon can embolden him to mix it with triathlon's superstars in today's European Championships in Kitzbuehel.
The Scottish prospects, who were both medallists at last year's world under-23 championships, will make their senior Great Britain debuts in the event, their final tune-up race ahead of the Commonwealth Games.
It marks a return for Austin after almost six months out as a result of injury, while Sheldon vaulted into the world's top 20 with a series of high-class showings on the world circuit. That has since provided an inspiration for Austin and he is optimistic of making a similar leap.
"It's good to be training with him and then see him go and do well in a race," said the 20-year-old. "It backs up the belief that what I'm doing is right. I just want to get a solid performance and see what I can do.
"The last while's been very frustrating. It's not so much that I've not been racing. It's knowing that you're not ready to race. That's tough. But over the past couple of weeks, I've felt ready to go and be back in the mix."
With David McNamee confirming his own comeback from injury, the Scots make up half the GB squad with Olympic champion Alistair Brownlee bidding to emerge from a minor slump by taking the title. The event will provide a barometer for the months ahead and Austin is relishing the test.
"It will be a similar standard to what the Commonwealth Games will be," said the Scot, who may race in the relay tomorrow too. "It's a tough course and a hard race, especially with Alistair doing it. There might be a role for me there, in the way I like to race. It fits in with the team."
Meanwhile, McNamee believes the Championship can push him closer to his best following the bike crash in March which left him on the sidelines. "My arm is getting stronger, which helps with the swimming."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article