No Roman holiday as ‘Golden’ hopeful Gillick bids to keep good run going

DAVID GILLICK, fresh from his record breaking run in Madrid last Saturday night, will feel at home among some of the greats of 400m running when he lines up at the Golden Gala in Rome tonight.

The race will feature three of the finalists in Beijing last year when the Irishman failed to get out of the first round. But things have changed since then and, after his 44.77 win in Madrid – his first time under 45 seconds – he goes into tonight’s race as the fastest man in the field this year.

He will line up along with the bronze medallist from last year’s Olympic Games, David Neville, who ran 44.80 secs for that medal before contributing a blistering 44.14 sec leg for the winning 4 x 400m relay team while Darold Williamson who ran 44.27 secs in 2005 was a member of the USA 4 x 400m relay team that won the gold medals at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.