LYNSEY Sharp, one of the stars of Glasgow 2014, is resigned to missing out on next month’s home European Indoor Championships– but insists she wouldn’t want to appear there just to make up the numbers in any case.
The 28-year-old, a former European outdoor champion who famously climbed off her sick bed to secure that silver medal at Hampden Park in 2014, finished fifth over 800m at yesterday’s Muller Indoor Grand Prix in a season’s best of 2.02.28.
While that was fully four seconds quicker than she had gone when finishing back in the same spot in the British trials last week and narrowly ahead of Leicester athlete Mari Smith, it was well behind yesterday’s GB one-two of Shelayna Oskan-Clarke and Adelle Tracey.
With Smith rubber stamping her auto-selection with a time of 2.02.34 which was well inside the qualifying standard to go with last week’s second place finish at the British trials, it all leaves the selectors with little option but to go with Oskan-Clarke, Smith and Tracey for their three potential spots for Glasgow.
“I think it is quite obvious what is going to happen,” said a gloomy but realistic Sharp yesterday. “That is just the way it is really.
“I have some things I need to work on,” added the athlete, who trains out in San Diego under the watchful eye of coach Terrence Mahon.
“That is what is important right now - there is no point being in making teams just to be there. I want to run for medals and I know that is not good enough to run for medals.”
Sharp, meanwhile, one of the most outspoken critics of allowing hyper-androgenous athletes such as Caster Semenya to compete in women’s races, said she will simply be relieved when the saga surrounding the South African comes to an end.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport will come to a determination between the IAAF and the South African’s lawyers this week on whether athletes such as her should have to take medication to suppress their abnormal naturally occurring hormone levels.
“As far as I am concerned there isn’t much more to say,” said Sharp, who even completed her university dissertation on the topic. “They aren’t saying anything that we haven’t heard before so there isn’t much to comment on.
“It is nothing new, this has been going on since 2008 and when I first ran against her: that is 11 years later and we are still talking about the same thing, there’s nothing I can do really,” she added. “But I think everyone wants it resolved. Either way, everyone wants to know what is happening.
“There is a lot more information out there now but I haven’t really paid a lot of attention to it in the last 18 months because honestly I am not on social media that much. People keep telling me stories and I am like ‘I didn’t have a clue’.”
While missing out on Glasgow will be further disappointment for an athlete who failed to miss the final at the Commonwealth Games, Sharp was still hopeful last night about her capacity to make the improvements she requires to get back to her best for the outdoor season, which culminates in the world championships in Doha in September.
“I don’t really want to say everything right now, but it is just putting the pieces together really,” she said. “My coach thinks, that once it all clicks, it can be pretty special.”
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