Twickenham’s Andrew Osagie bounced back from the disappointment of getting disqualified at last week’s UK Championships with a superb performance at the British Indoor Grand Prix meeting on Saturday.
Osagie, 25, edged ever nearer to Sebastian Coe’s 31-year-old British indoor 800m record of one minute 44.91 seconds by recording 1:45.22 to finish fourth – less than a second behind Ethiopian winner and reigning world champion Mohammed Aman.
“I’m massively happy with that,” said the St Mary’s University-based athlete.
“I’ve had a cold this week, which has been a bit annoying, so I relaxed a little bit too much.
“On another day if I ran my race well I might have got close to a British record.
“But I got a quick time going into the World Indoors.
“It was very frustrating last weekend, mainly because I travelled to Sheffield for essentially nothing, but I got a lot of confidence from it and ticked the box with championship racing.”
Despite lowering his season’s best to 3:39.94 Osagie’s fellow St Mary’s colleague Charlie Grice was expecting better in the 1,500m.
“I was expecting a bit more than that,” admitted the 20-year-old after finish seventh behind behind winner Kenya’s Nixon Kiplima Chepseba.
“But it’s still good progression from last year, so I can’t complain.”
l Surrey Schools Cross-Country U15 champion Mollie O’Sullivan was the first female athlete home on her Bushy park parkrun debut on Saturday.
The 13-year-old Kingston AC & Polytechnic Harrier clocked 19 minutes 35 seconds to finish 28th overall behind men’s race winner Paul Pollock, who crossed the line in 15:18 – more than a minute ahead of second-placed Paul Lowe (16:44).
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