Twell set to make debut for Scots team at Gateshead
athlete aiming to run in delhi games
Published:
STEPH Twell, who is widely looked upon as the best young British distance-running prospect since Paula Radcliffe, makes her Scotland debut in the first round of the UK cross-country challenge series at Gateshead on Saturday.
The 20-year-old from Aldershot in Hampshire, who has won the European junior title three times, was born in Colchester and has lived in Germany and Northern Ireland, but is based at St Mary's University in Twickenham.
She competed for England as a youngster, but qualifies to run for Scotland as her mum Isobel comes from Paisley. She also has grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in Scotland.
Twell has decided she wants to represent Scotland in next year's Commonwealth Games in New Delhi and this weekend's outing is a mark of her commitment to her adopted nation.
She will be joined in the Scotland team at Gateshead by Dundee University dentistry student Morag MacLarty (Central AC), from Auchterarder, who is a former European 1500m champion.
Former Great Britain junior cross-country international Rosie Smith (Hunters Bog Trotters) completes the starting line-up.
The trio will be aiming for selection for the Great Britain squad for the European cross-country championships to be held in Dublin next month.
Stirling's Alastair Hay (Central AC) is in the Scottish men's team alongside Derek Hawkins (Kilbarchan AAC) and Craig Ruddy (Inverclyde AC).
Callum Hawkins (Kilbarchan AAC) and Alex Hendry (Central AC) will compete in the junior men's race while Catriona Buchanan (Central AC) and Beth Potter (Victoria Park City of Glasgow AC) are in the junior women's team.
Former European 1500 metres champion Sureyya Ayhan Kop has been banned for life from athletics by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The Turkish athlete failed a drugs test in September 2007 when a sample she gave revealed stanozolol and methandienone metabolites.
It was Kop’s second doping offence after she obstructed a test in 2004 before the Athens Olympics.
The 31-year-old, who won the 2002 European title before coming second at the following year’s World Championships, was initially given a lifetime ban by the Turkish Athletics Federation although that was subsequently reduced to four years by the Arbitration Tribunal of the General Directorate of Youth and Sport.
While the life ban was imposed on the athlete, CAS lifted a two-year suspension on her husband and coach Yucel Kop as there was no evidence he had violated any disciplinary or anti-doping rule.
