EILIDH Doyle is bracing herself for a battle with her British relay team-mates as she bids to star at the European Indoor Championships in Glasgow in March.
The 31-year-old from Kinross, Scotland’s most decorated athlete, kicked off her 2018 season with a surprise first individual global indoor medal in the 400m at the world indoor championship in Birmingham and finished it with an outdoor European relay bronze in the company of Scotland’s Zoey Clark and GB team-mates Anyika Onoura and Amy Allcock.
It is inside 100 days now until the action shifts to Glasgow’s Emirates Arena and the European Indoor Championships and Doyle knows that just earning a place on the GB team for the event would allow her to feel pretty good about her chances of taking a medal.
“I think the competition is going to be big and a lot of it is going to come from the British athletes,” said Doyle.
“In the last couple of years, a lot of British athletes haven’t targeted the indoors because there have been different focuses but I think because the world championships are so late next year [September in Doha] the majority of the 400m girls – the athletes I’ll run the relay with – are all going to be targeting Glasgow.
“So even just being able to make the team is going to be a big challenge for me,” she added. “On a European scale, the Polish girls are very strong, the Swiss girl who won the European 400m hurdles [Léa Sprunger] is very strong, so it’s going to be a really tough event. To get there is going to be the first challenge and then to go there and hopefully perform well is going to be the next one.”
Doyle returned north of the border to Cumbernauld from her training base near Bath recently, being persuaded to take up a board position with scottishathletics in the process. She was back inspiring the next generation as she returned to her old primary school in Kinross, which has been re-developed.
“It was very different from when I was there – there was one tree that has been kept from the old school that has been kept,” said Doyle. “So I recognised that but didn’t recognise anything else – it’s a brand new school. But it’s really good for the town.
“It was nice to go back. My mum and dad are still in Kinross, my sister is in Kinross and my brother is in Kinross too so I’ll got through to see them, more so now that I’m back up the road. I’ve watched the old school disappear and the new one being built so I wanted to have a nosey and see what it looks like. My niece Lennox will be going there soon – she’s two in January but they have a nursery as well as the school – so it was to good to see it from her point of view as well.”
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