JASON GARDENER and Mark Lewis-Francis, two of Great Britain’s gold medal-winning team in the 4 x 100 metres at the Olympics Games in Athens last summer, will take separate routes in their attempt to find their form for the European Indoor Championships in Madrid next week. Gardener will race in Chemnitz, Germany, on Friday, while Lewis-Francis will stay at home to train.
Both have struggled for form over 60 metres this winter, Gardener for the quick times of which he thought he was capable and Lewis-Francis to finish a competition. Gardener finished last of the five remaining finalists, after three had been disqualified for false starts, in the Norwich Union Grand Prix in Birmingham on Friday, raising doubts over whether he would even defend his European title.
However, Robert Wagner, Gardener’s manager, said yesterday that the athlete had still been feeling tired in Birmingham from sleep-interrupted nights caused by his baby daughter being unwell. “He is confident he will be all right for Madrid,” Wagner said.
Gardener hopes to return to winning form — he has lost only three of his past 23 races indoors — in Chemnitz and improve his season’s best time of 6.56sec. At least Lewis-Francis, one of those disqualified, secured the qualifying time for Madrid in his semi-final. He has rejected a chance to run in an international meeting in Madrid on Thursday to concentrate on training and ensure that his hamstring is up to the job at the European Championships.
The selectors will name their team tomorrow and it is one that is likely to include at least five athletes picked for their senior international championship debut for Great Britain. They are Dale Garland (400 metres), Jimmy Watkins (800 metres), Ed Jackson (1,500 metres) and Jeanette Kwayke and Katherine Endacott (60 metres).