Scottish duo Chris O'Hare and Guy Learmonth have been backed to pursue even further gains by UK Athletics performance director Neil Black after their stellar showing at the European Indoors.
Boston-based O'Hare walked away with bronze in the 1500 metres while Learmonth, who will fly out to South Africa next week to train, reached the 800m final on his senior Great Britain debut. With both touted as medal candidates by the time of the Rio Olympics next year, Black claims their revamped coaching set-ups are right on track.
"Chris came into the competition after a shaky performance in Birmingham - he's held himself together and gone through it totally professionally and then nailed it in the final," the former Bellahouston Harrier said. "What more could he have done? It's a good sign about his move to Boston which we 100 per cent support. We have a great relationship with his team and that's been seamless.
"Guy probably feels like he ran out of steam in the end but he handled the championships brilliantly. He's developed well and we're excited about his future."
Scottish high jump champion Allan Smith, who missed the final in Prague with a sub-par showing, could face disciplinary action from UKA with the 22-year-old understood to have missed both a team meeting and a mandatory media session during the championships.
Meanwhile Jessica Ennis-Hill's comeback from pregnancy is on schedule, Black revealed, with the Olympic heptathlon champion set to throw herself into the fray at the IAAF Challenge in Gotzis in May. The 29-year-old, who last competed in July 2013 before the birth of her son Reggie, has been building steadily towards a comeback under her long-time coach Toni Minichiello.
"She wants to be at the world championships, she understands it's a year of exploration, development back, hopefully to her best," Black said. "That's just kind of where we're leaving it at this point. We'll wait and see. All the feedback that we've had, Peter Stanley is regularly there, meeting with Jess, Toni, the javelin sessions, the biomechanical support, so they're walking together. And all the feedback is great progression, so I think its real."
Ennis-Hill will face a three-way fight to regain her spot as UK number one with European Indoor gold medallist Katarina Johnson-Thompson now established as the best in the world and 17-year-old hope Morgan Lake already emerging as an outside best for a spot on the Olympic podium by 2016.
"I just think it's an amazing set of circumstances," Black added. "I'm sure its part coincidental and it's part as a result of all the stimulus dating back many years, the striving to beat each other and role models and so on. But to think that they are all going to be hopefully in Gotzis and they're all hopefully going to be at the world championships this year and the Olympics next year, it's just a kind of magical time. And what comes from it is just going to be spectacular."
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