Buck hopes for silver lining after missing out in Helsinki

RICHARD Buck gave UK Athletics chief Charles van Commenee a timely nudge ahead of today’s London 2012 Olympic selection meeting by helping Britain’s men claim 4x400m relay silver.

Van Commenee has a host of relay options open to him at London 2012, with British No 1 Martyn Rooney missing at the European Championships in Helsinki, while 400m hurdler Dai Greene is also an option.

After the first three legs of yesterday’s final, Britain found themselves in the gold medal position after strong performances from Nigel Levine, Conrad Williams and Rob Tobin.

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However, Buck, from York, who finished fifth in the individual 400m in the Finnish capital, was unable to hold off the challenge of Belgium’s Kevin Borlee – the fastest man in Europe this season – as the Brit was reeled in with 150m to go.

Buck was forced to dig deep as Germany closed in the final 50m but Britain held on to claim a much-deserved podium position.

“I’m a bit disappointed with that – the guys did such a good job to get me there,” said Buck. “I tried to keep a lead, and pushed out hard.

“I tried to ease off down the third hundred, to save a little for the kick on but obviously the guy was strong, and I didn’t quite have enough. I put the team down a little bit there because they put in a great performance.

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“I’m still really pleased with it, but we all know we want that little bit more than that and we’ve got a couple weeks now to make sure that happens.”

Buck is convinced the performance of the British quartet bodes well for London 2012 after their gutsy showing in the Finnish capital.

“That was good preparation for the Olympic Games; we’ve got a month now before the next final, so we’ve got a lot of work to put in with America, Jamaica and the rest of the world coming.

“It’s good we can run another season’s best and we’ve got a lot of people to work with. We’ve got a big team, so we’re going to fix it and as long as we’re on the podium in London, we’ll be happy.”

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Elsewhere, Jo Pavey claimed silver in the 10,000 metres at the age of 38 to cap a disappointing tournament in terms of medals for GB.

The day after Britain’s women failed to secure a place at their home Olympics in the 4x100m relay, the men’s quartet failed to finish their final after the experienced duo of Christian Malcolm and Dwain Chambers did not exchange the baton following the first leg.

That meant a total of seven medals – three gold, three silver and one bronze – in comparison to the record 19 achieved in Barcelona two years ago, but Van Commenee knew that would be the case with most of the star names missing after securing their Olympic places at the trials last weekend.

“I got confirmation for what I thought was going to happen, a lot of British athletes were very flat here,” Van Commenee said after Britain finished sixth in the medal table behind Germany, Russia, France, Ukraine and Turkey.

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“I could see this coming. I decided a year ago to put a selection policy in place keep our best athletes out with the exception of a few for whom I thought it would be helpful.

“It was too much to do rounds at the weekend (at the trials) and again five or six days later.

“I’m relatively happy that we return home with our best athletes undamaged.”

The same could not be said for Britain’s reputation in the relays, with last night’s failure the latest in a long line which includes dropped batons at the Olympics in Atlanta (1996) and Sydney (2000) and the World Championships in Edmonton (2001), along with a disqualification at the last Olympics in Beijing and the World Championships in Daegu (2011). They also went out in the first round at the last European Championships in Barcelona when a poor changeover between Marlon Devonish and Mark Lewis-Francis saw them finish fifth in their heat.

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This time the baton never even got that far as Malcolm lost momentum around the bend and was unable to get it to Chambers, who was anxious to get a good start with France’s individual 100m champion Christophe Lemaitre on his outside.

Earlier in the night, Pavey was unable to stay with eventual champion Dulce Felix of Portugal when she made the decisive break with eight laps to go, and found herself third at the bell behind Ukraine’s Olha Skrypak.

But the veteran Devon athlete, who is likely to run both the 5,000 and 10,000m at the Olympics, overtook Skrypak in the home straight to secure silver in 31 minutes 49.03 seconds, with Ireland’s Fionnuala Britton in fourth. Pavey’s team-mate Charlotte Purdue was sixth in 32mins 28.46secs, with Gemma Steel ninth in 32:46.32.

City of Sheffield finished seventh in the second British League (Premiers Division) fixture at Hendon on Saturday.

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They had finished seventh in the first-round match which leaves them seventh in the league table, above only newly-promoted Kent AC at the halfway stage.

Middlesborough’s Chris Tomlinson competed in the long jump for Newham and Essex, flying back from Helsinki where he failed to make the long jump final at the European Championships.

Although he won with 7.93 he was still well outside the Olympic A standard which he has not achieved this year.

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