Athletics: Gardener puts aside setback

Barry Roberts
Sunday 03 August 2003 19:00 EDT
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Jason Gardener shrugged off some of the disappointment of failing to gain selection for the Great Britain team in the World Championships 100 metres with victory in Belgium on Saturday.

The world indoor 60m silver medallist clocked 10.23sec at the KBC Night of Athletics in Heusden-Zolder. He finished four-hundredths of a second ahead of Stiphane Buckland of Mauritius with Marcus Brunson of the United States coming third.

Kelly Sotherton's hopes of joining Olympic champion Denise Lewis in the World Championships heptathlon were dashed at the Swiss Open Championships in Berne on Saturday. The 26-year-old Birchfield Harrier suffered three fouls in the long jump to end her chances of reaching the qualifying total of 6105 points, having finished the first day of the competition on course to win a place in the team.

Sotherton's coach, Charles van Commenee, said: "She is still on a learning curve and the issue of discipline on the runway is one of the issues that have to be addressed. Kelly is in tears now because the World Championships are out of the question."

Time is running out for Britain's injury-prone 800m runner Jo Fenn to gain a place in the team. She has been sidelined for three months because of a stress fracture to her left tibia and missed the British trials for the Championships, which begin in Paris on 23 August.

Fenn returned to action in races in Ashford and Wigan this weekend, but her performances will have failed to impress the selectors. Her chances now hinge entirely on a fast run in Berlin on Sunday.

In her first appearance after narrowly missing out on a medal at the World Indoor Championships in March, Fenn managed a time of 2min 6.84sec in finishing second in Ashford. She was easily beaten by the European Under-23 1,500m bronze medallist Lisa Dobriskey, who clocked 2:04.45.

"She went through the first 200 metres in 28sec," said her manager, Ayo Falola. "Quite simply she got carried away."

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