Cross country: Steph Twell continued her prodigious progress on Saturday when she won the senior women�s trial for the European Cross-country Championships at Sefton Park, Liverpool.

Steph Twell continued her prodigious progress on Saturday when she won the senior women's trial for the European Cross-country Championships at Sefton Park, Liverpool.

Aged 19, still a junior, and with two European junior titles behind her, she has no intention of running the senior race in Brussels in a fortnight. Yet she carved an 11-second victory over former senior European champion Hayley Yelling.

Twell, World junior 1500m track champion and touted as the successor to Paula Radcliffe, held back in the early stages and came through comfortably in the freezing fog, suggesting her ambition of a hat trick of European junior titles is within reach.

Scots Laura Kenney and Morag MacLarty were eighth and ninth respectively, and while this is encouraging progress for Central's MacLarty, neither should expect to be named in the GB team.

Indeed, Chris O'Hare, the reigning Scottish under-17 champion from Edinburgh, who was sixth in the junior men's race, is the only Scot with a chance of making the squad on Saturday's efforts, though Arizona-based Andrew Lemoncello, who remained in the US, could receive the selectors' backing.

Callum Hawkins from Kilbarchan was the only Scots winner, in the under-17 race, while his brother, Derek, was 11th behind O'Hare.

Andy Vernon of Aldershot took a close senior men's race in 29:34 with Bristol-based student Tom Russell, first of the Scottish contingent in 16th, almost a minute behind. Russell, who was runner-up for the Scottish title earlier this year, finished 14 seconds and three places ahead of Central's former Scottish champion, namesake Robert Russell.

Vernon still qualifies as an under-23, but like Twell does not wish senior selection for Brussels. "I want to do the under-23 race . . . because I know I can win it."

• Chris Rawlinson, who won Commonwealth gold at 400m hurdles for England in 2002, plans to come out of retirement and hopes to compete for Australia at next year's world championships in Berlin. The 36-year-old quit competition to coach his wife, Jana Pitman, and steered her to a second world title last year in Osaka. The Australian qualifying standard is 49.25sec.

• Shettleston's Eritrean contingent continue to dominate Scottish men's endurance running, with a one-two in the Hugh Wilson Memorial 10km at East Kilbride on Saturday.

Teweldeberhan Mengisteab won by a second from Tzegezeab Woldemichael in 30min 50sec, with Cambuslang veteran Stephen Wylie third, 62 seconds behind.

The African pair sought political asylum after the World Cross-country event in Edinburgh, and team-mate Amanuel Hagos has already captured the Stewart's grand prix title.

• The world marathon record-holder, Haile Gebrselassie, yesterday won the inaugural Great Australian Run in Melbourne. But with nobody prepared to make the pace, any prospect of threatening the seven-year-old world best for 15km (41.29) soon evaporated. Ethiopian Gebrselassie won in 42:40.

The former holder of the women's world marathon best, Wincatherine Ndereba, took the women's race in 50:43.