MIDDLE distance runner Andy Baddeley suffered an unexpected defeat – his first of the outdoor season – at last night's Bank of Scotland Cup meeting in Grangemouth.
Baddeley, a 1,500 metres specialist, stepped down to 800m but was still expected to win as he puts a final touch to his preparations for next week's Aviva UK Championships and Olympic trials in Birmingham.
But the brilliant winner of last month's
Dream Mile in Oslo got his tactics completely wrong and suffered the consequences when outsprinted down the final straight by Joe Thomas. The 20-year-old Welshman tracked Baddeley coming off the last bend and powered away to win by 0.11seconds, in a time of 1min 50.41sec, with Graeme Oudney third in 1:51.48.
"I found it quite hard to get around him, so I decided to bide my time and go in the last 50 metres," said Thomas, after his shock success.
Carolina Kluft won her long jump competition but went home disappointed, after producing a best clearance of only 6.19m.
There were high hopes the 25-year-old multi-eventer might attack the Swedish record of 6.99m, but she never displayed that kind of form.
Kluft – who is not defending her Olympic heptathlon title and will instead compete in the long and triple-jumps in Beijing – struggled with all four attempts.
"I felt in the warm-up I had no power in my legs, because I have been doing a lot of hard training in preparation for the Olympics," said Kluft.
"My shape is not too good – and with the headwind and the cold, it was too difficult for me to jump well."
Scotland easily won the overall title for a third successive year, ahead of a USA junior and Bank of Scotland development team.
The full article contains 304 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
