North-east sprinter Alisha Rees believes she has an outside chance of winning a place on the Great Britain and Northern Ireland team for this year’s Tokyo Olympic Games following her successful start to 2020.
The 20-year-old Banchory Stonehaven AC club member, who is studying sociology at Loughborough University, has twice broken the Scottish women’s 60m indoor record since the beginning of the year and picked up the silver medal over this distance in the British Championships at Glasgow’s Emirates Arena at the weekend.
She first broke the record in January when clocking 7.33s to win the Scottish title in Glasgow before going on to improve the mark to 7.32s when taking silver in the British Universities and Colleges Championships in Sheffield.
Rees was determined to go even faster at the British Championships, but was disappointed to finish second with a time of 7.49s behind Charnwood’s Amy Hunt, who won with 7.39s.
She said: “I had an absolute shocker of a start. My reaction time was poor and I don’t know what happened. If you get a bad start in a race as short as 60m, then it’s over. I came out of the blocks and couldn’t believe I was so far behind and thought I might not even get a medal.
“I was able to come through the field, but I wasn’t going to make up ground on the winner.
“I guess it’s just the way things can go. I must have looked very moody on the podium, but I’m not going to pretend I’m happy with silver when I’m not. It’s another learning experience and I guess over the season as a whole, it has been good.”
Rees will focus on the summer season when she’ll be competing in the 100m and 200m. She admits that Olympic selection is maybe a bit beyond her at this stage, but hasn’t dismissed that exciting possibility.
She said: “I’m certainly not ruling it out. I definitely believe there’s a 4x100m relay spot up for grabs, but there’s quite a few people who could get it. I’ll try to get some fast times done quite early to put my name in the frame, then we’ll see how things develop.”
Meanwhile, Alexander Mackay (Inverness Harriers) was in good form at the Aberdeen AAC indoor meeting, throwing a personal best 13.29m to take top spot in the shot put competition. He also equalled his personal best time of 7.13s in the 60m.
His younger brother Alister also achieved a shot put PB of 12m and cleared 5.64m, for second position behind Elgin’s Kyle Wilkinson (6.23), in the long jump.
Robbie Farquhar (Aberdeen AC) posted the fastest 60m time of the day, 7.02s, while his clubmate Struan Linton cut his PB down to 7.05s.
