Glasgow - While the 2002 season of British luminaries such as Colin Jackson, Jonathan Edwards, and Steve Backley fizzled, somewhat, to a conclusion at the World Cup final in Madrid, Lee McConnell maintained her form right to the final finish tape.

Considering that the very notion of a finish line was a recent novelty to the former high jumper, and that she had been among the least heralded of UK athletes at the start of the summer, the Scot proved herself one of the discoveries of the season.

She was one of just four British women in Europe’s team in Madrid, having won European and Commonwealth medals. She closed out the year with 50.82 seconds, finishing fourth in the 400m for Europe, close on the heels of European champion Olesaya Zykina, with a time that ranks her 11th equal in the world. She had set personal bests in Manchester, Munich and Madrid.

She had taken continental bronze behind Zykina in Munich’s Olympiastadion, before beating her in the GB v USA v Russia match in her home city of Glasgow, and also won silver for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

Madrid capped a remarkable season for the woman whose last appearance in the Spanish city had been two years earlier, in an under-23 international for Great Britain. She was then a high jumper, the discipline in which she had been three times national champion, with a best of 1.88 metres. Yet that contest, her last of 2000, convinced her to look elsewhere.

“When I did not clear 1.90m, my target for the year, I decided to switch,” said McConnell, a graduate in physical education, sports science, and recreation from Loughborough university. “I felt I’d stagnated, and was going nowhere.”

She gave herself two seasons to make the grade at 400m. If she failed, she would quit and look for a real job. Suffice to say, traditional employment is no longer a priority.

“I thought I might be looking for a job now, or starting a post-graduate year, to become a physical education teacher,” she says.

Increased lottery support, and sponsorship and support offers, mean she does not need to start teaching. Instead she is exploring a setting up as a personal fitness instructor with fellow international and PE graduate Carey Easton, who is also her training partner.

“It’s really difficult to find work compatible with athletics. I understand people not wanting to employ athletes. I’d a job in a bank, and they were supportive, but I’d problems which turned out to be to do with the seat I was using. I went off for some warm-weather training, and they disappeared. So the bank job was not on.”

With her three national high jump titles, and an AAA age-group title behind her, plus the Commonwealth and World Student Games qualifying standards in that event already achieved, she took a huge gamble with her lottery funding and institute of sport status, by switching events.

After less than a season at 400m, she reached the world semis in Edmonton last year, but McConnell does not regard her high jump years as wasted. She is now second fastest Scot at 400m, but the three others in the all-time top four: GB internationalists Linsey Macdonald (Olympic finallist and relay bronze medallist aged 16, in Moscow), Mel Neef (1995 Europa Cup champion), and Allison Curbishley (Commonwealth silver medallist, 1998), all ended their one-lap careers prematurely, due to injury.

“Because I did not start 400's so young, I hope I'll not be so susceptible,” said McConnell. “High jump is more about strength and conditioning. I don't believe in starting 400's at a very young age. I know I could never have coped with the training. I have been on a good weights and pliometrics programme for years, building up my strength.”

Yet there were signs that she would one day run fast. In 1995 she topped the Scottish under-17 rankings at 300m, with 39.49. “I went to the European under-23 championships in Gothenburg as a high jumper, but was also in the relay pool. I was No.1 in Britain and No.17 in Europe for my age that year at 400m.”

When McConnell reached the World Student 400m final in Beijing, the scroll given to each competitor upon departure was of greater significance to her than most competitors. Several years before she had had her name tattooed on her navel in Chinese characters. “My dad had a friend in a Chinese restaurant write it down on a piece of paper, and I had the tattoo done.”

Inevitably, friends used to tease her that the tattoo might actually advertise the price of Cantonese king prawns and fried rice, or whatever.

“When I got on the plane, I unrolled the scroll, and there was my name in Chinese, exactly the same as my tattoo.”

China stood her in good stead for this year, as it was back to back with Edmonton. “I had reservations about being able to do that, and was exhausted by the time it came to the Beijing final. Mentally I was not prepared for it, but it helped when the Commonwealths and Europeans were so close this year.”

It has also given her a taste of what it will be like at the 2008 Olympics, by which time she should be at her peak, but probably not at 400m. McConnell has already considered, but only temporarily dismissed, transition to yet a third event, namely the 400m hurdles.

“I looked at the hurdles, but I've decided to leave it alone for now. It’s certainly something I plan to try. Maybe after the Athens Olympics.”

McConnell, who turned 24 on October 9, is already faster on the flat at 400m than Sally Gunnell, England’s former World record holder and Olympic and World 400m hurdles champion. That’s also a better differential than the world’s four fastest one-lap hurdlers this year. Her height, and the spatial awareness developed by jumping, make her a natural for the event, say her coaches, Roger Harkins and Alan Scobie, former international triple jumpers and high jumpers respectively. Were she to achieve Gunnell's flat/hurdles differential of 1.70 seconds that would give McConnell a one-lap hurdles time of 52.52sec.

Students of the event will recognise that is nine hundredths inside the existing World record. On that basis the event might even be regarded as something of a soft touch, and one also wonders what Ana Guevara might do to the event should the Mexican decide to switch!

Doug Gillon for the IAAF