Logo

News13 Jan 2002


Ladejo could go for one lap double at Commonwealth Games

FacebookTwitterEmail

Ladejo could go for one lap double at Commonwealth Games
Steven Downes for the IAAF
13 January 2002 - Du’aine Ladejo, the former European 400 metres champion, says he wants to combine both one-lap hurdling and flat sprinting this summer – and that could mean his racing either 400-metre event at the Commonwealth Games and European championships this year.

“I don’t think there’s any conflict about training and competing in both events,” Ladejo, now aged 30, the European champion at 400m on the flat in 1994, said in a magazine interview published this week.

“Providing you can hurdle, to compete in both is as feasible as running both the 100 and 200 metres.”

Ladejo has had mixed fortunes in recent times. In 1998, he took to the decathlon, finishing a modest seventh place at that year’s Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

By 2000, he had moved on to the 400m hurdles, but a trip at the final flight in the semi-finals at the British selection trials cost him any chance of selection for the Sydney Olympics.

Although selected to compete in the hurdles at the IAAF World Championships last year in Edmonton, Ladejo pulled out just before his heat with back pain.

His flat 400m form has also been indifferent, although he says that this winter he will be bidding to regain the European indoor crown that was his in 1994 and 1996.

“It was always my plan when I started the 400m hurdles to revert back to the 400m flat at some stage,” Ladejo, who has combined his athletics with a career as a television presenter, says.

Ladejo is not yet certain which event he will opt for at the Commonwealth Games, being staged in Manchester in late July, or the European Championships, in Munich the following month. His domestic rivals in the flat one-lap sprint include Mark Richardson, IAAF world indoor champion Daniel Caines, and 1998 IAAF World Cup-winner Iwan Thomas. Over the hurdles, Ladejo will have to contend with Chris Rawlinson, fifth placer in Edmonton.

“I was pleased to run 49.29 last season, but I’ve never come close to running a good 400m hurdles,” Ladejo admitted to Athletics Weekly. “I’ve made loads of mistakes in all of my races.”

Ladejo will not, however, compete at the British indoor trial event, to be staged for the first time in Cardiff, south Wales, next month – Birmingham, the usual venue for the AAA Indoor Championships, is not available because the National Indoor Arena is being used to stage a Davis Cup tennis match.

“If the selectors won’t pick me for the European Indoors for not competing at Cardiff, then fine. I’m not competing on the Cardiff track – the inside two lanes are just far too tight,” Ladejo said.

Already certain to be missing from the European Indoor Championships in Vienna will be world indoor 400m champion Caines.

Caines, 22, is planning a busy indoor season, but has decided to avoid the rigours of championship competition in order to allow him to prepare better for the twin challenges that await him this summer.

“I’ve made my mark indoors,” he said. “Now my main focus is outdoors and the Commonwealth Games and European Championships. It is going to be a long, hard season.”

Pages related to this article
Disciplines
Loading...