Turnbull makes mark, but Davoren misses out

GARETH TURNBULL has achieved his ambition of posting the B standard for the world championships.

Turnbull completed the task last week at Cuxhaven, Germany, winning the 1500m in a new personal best time of 3:36.60 but Freda Davoren missed the standard by just four tenths of a second. Turnbull, who turned in a blistering last lap to win the 1500m at the BUPA Cork City Sports earlier this month, needed something special to book his flight to Paris in August and he found by running almost two seconds better than his previous best set some two years ago, moving him to the top of the current Irish ranking list.

More significant was that he had a string of Algerians and Kenyans trailing in his wake and he now has no problem deciding between the world championships and the world student games in Korea. A former world student medallist, there would have been little gain in revisiting that level.