HANNAH MILEY defended her 400m individual medley title on the opening night of the British Championships in Sheffield but the Scot just missed out on cementing her spot at July’s world championships.
The 27-year-old, fourth at last summer’s Olympics, pulled clear of rival Aimee Wilmott to win in 4:34.12 with Aberdeen training partner Orla Adams seventh.
But Miley will now have to wait on selection for Budapest after finishing an agonising four-hundredths of a second outside the automatic qualifying time despite fighting off a crop of fresh contenders.
“I’m a bit tired,” she admitted. “But it was great to see a lot of the youngsters coming through in the morning’s heats, who can go under 4:40. It made me excited to race the final. It means the event’s moving on and hopefully dragging me along with it.”
Ross Murdoch had to play second fiddle to Olympic champion Adam Peaty in the 100m breaststroke with the Englishman romping clear in 57.79 seconds at Ponds Forge to become the first person to officially book their ticket to the worlds.
The Scot, who will race over 200m later this week, was over two seconds behind with Stirling team-mate Craig Benson fourth but Peaty was simply unstoppable. “I came here to get the job done,” he said.
James Guy landed a third successive British title in the 400 freestyle with fellow Olympic silver medallist Stephen Milne taking silver. Edinburgh’s Corrie Scott took bronze in the women’s 50m backstroke with Imogen Clark winning in a UK record of 30.21 secs. Craig McNally was third in the men’s 50 back behind Chris Walker-Hebborn with City of Perth’s Scott McLay taking the junior title in the event to boost his chances of a swim at this year’s world junior championships in Indianapolis.
Duncan Scott debuts in the 200m butterfly today while Kathleen Dawson will open her championships in the 100m backstroke with the European medallist looking to show the steps forward made since her switch to Stirling last autumn.
“It will give me more confidence in myself,” the Scot said. “I’m already happy with how things are. I know I’m world standard and that I can compete against these girls who went to the Olympics. Worlds is my next target. And now I have to be ready to take that one.”
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 here