Athletics: Newton and Grant given chance to raise profile

A British athletics season that will culminate in the Olympics gets properly under way today on the boards of the Kelvin Hall indoor track in Glasgow. For two young home athletes in particular, Robert Newton and Dwayne Grant, the event offers a precious opportunity to further their developing careers.

With many of Britain's leading athletes training abroad, or concentrating on the outdoor season, the Norwich Union International - a five-way competition between Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, Italy and a World Select team - has seen a number of relatively inexperienced athletes being offered an international call-up, and Newton and Grant, chosen respectively for the 60 metres hurdles and 200m, stand to gain much.

Experienced observers believe both these competitors have the ability to rise to world class in their events, and a good showing today will enable them to establish their profiles with the public alongside more established team-mates such as Kelly Holmes, who runs over 1500m, and Jason Gardener, who contests the 60m.

Newton faces the harder task, but Grant, who was called into the team on Tuesday after his training partner, Julian Golding, withdrew with a toe injury, has an opportunity to win.

It will be only the second indoor 200m outing for Grant, a European Under-23 4x100m gold medallist, and he will be hoping it goes better than his first effort four years ago, when he was disqualified.

The 33-year-old Holmes, who added a world 1500m bronze last summer to the Olympic bronze she won in 2000, is at the other end of her career, but she has high hopes of going one better than the silver medal she earned at last year's World Indoor Championships in Birmingham when this year's event comes around again in Budapest from 5 to 7 March.

The former army sergeant has spent almost all of her time since October at her training base in South Africa, where she has been working alongside her friend Maria Mutola, who competes in the 800m today, and seeking to rid herself of a series of injuries which have made her miss a month's work.

"It's the same familiar scenario," Holmes said yesterday. "But now I'm fine and there are no excuses about what happens in Glasgow."

After finishing as runner-up behind the world record-holder, Regina Jacobs, nine months ago, Holmes will start this year's World Indoors as favourite knowing that the United States runner will not be defending her title in Budapest. Jacobs, the only woman ever to run under four minutes for the metric mile indoors, is one of the top Americans who tested positive for the designer drug tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) in last June's USA Championships.

Holmes nevertheless dismissed suggestions that she should lodge an appeal and replace Jacobs as the world champion. "I can't change the decision as she was caught in the summer and there's nothing to say she was cheating before," Holmes said.

Gardener, the reigning European indoor champion, will be up against a former world indoor 60m champion in Tim Harden, of the United States. Harden, who holds the European record of 6.46sec, is looking for a time of around 6.55 today. He also plans to race in five days' time in Erfurt, then in Stuttgart 48 hours later.

The Glasgow meeting could also see the women's world pole vault record put under pressure by the Russian pair of Yelena Isinbayeva, who set the world outdoor record at Gateshead last year, and Svetlana Feofanova, who broke the world indoor record here last year and subsequently won the world outdoor title in Paris.