Athletics: Rising star East sets a summer target

Michael East has been left with some catching up to do in the wake of his emergence as the British find of the indoor season. After his surprise bronze-medal run at the European Indoor Championships in Vienna nine days ago, the 1500m runner secured himself the services of an agent. After his equally impressive winning run in the Norwich Union International at the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow on Saturday, though, the 24-year-old Portsmouth man revealed that he has yet to secure a shoe sponsorship deal.

"Hopefully someone will offer me a contract now," East said, having become the sixth and final British winner, following in the footsteps of Daniel Caines (400m), Catherine Murphy (400m), Colin Jackson (60m hurdles), Ashia Hansen (triple jump) and Jason Gardener (60m). The irony is that Britain's rising new middle-distance star works for Saucony, one of the world's leading manufacturers of running shoes, at its UK headquarters in Southsea.

It is not the only irony that East has been contemplating following his late addition to the British team for Vienna; he had been aiming towards the short-course trial for the world cross-country championships until he achieved the 1500m qualifying time on the eve of the final selection deadline at the Norwich Union Grand Prix event.

It was at that meeting in Birmingham that an envelope containing flight tickets, stadium tickets and an accommodation booking for the outdoor European championships in Munich in August happened to drop from the Norwich Union Balloon, which had been hovering above the crowd in the National Indoor Arena, directly into the lap of East's wife, Claire.

Now the pressure is on East to achieve the Munich qualifying standard, 3min 36.5sec, so that Claire and a friend can watch him in the Olympiastadion. "My main aim for the summer, though, is the Commonwealth Games," he said, confessing that his desire to be in Manchester was so strong that he had already bought tickets to watch the heats, semi-final and final of the 1500m before establishing himself as a leading candidate for selection.

"It's still going to be hard to get into the England team," East said. "There's Tony Whiteman, Andy Graffin, John Mayock, Tom Mayo, Angus MacLean. There are a lot of contenders vying for those places."

Mark Rowland, the man who has guided East on his international breakthrough, would have been proud of such pragmatism. He would have been proud of the way his protégé ran, too, though the steeple- chaser-turned-coach was not at the Kelvin Hall to see it. "I was there in Vienna for Michael but athletes have to learn to do it themselves," Rowland reasoned.

East did it for himself in style, easing past Mayock, the Vienna 3,000m bronze medallist and British team captain, with 100m to go to the line and finishing a clear winner in 3min 43.70sec.

"If I'd run badly it would have taken the polish off what I'd done in Vienna," he said. Instead, the new find added a little more sparkle to his Viennese bronze.