Courtney Shows Her Versatility In Lausanne

Melissa Courtney followed up her 5,000m silver medal at the British Championships last weekend with an appearance at the Lausanne Diamond League meeting.

Courtney displayed her versatility across the distances by taking part in a world class 1500m featuring the likes of world and Olympic 800m champion Caster Semenya and former world indoor 1500m champion Sifan Hassan.

The Poole AC athlete, who is coached by Rob Denmark, finished 10th out of a field of 18 in a time of 4:06.27.

Earlier this season, Courtney won 1500 bronze for Wales at the Commonwealth Games in Australia and will next month represent Great Britain over 5,000m at the European Championships in Berlin thanks to her British Championship silver in Birmingham last weekend.

The race was won by American Shelby Houlihan in a time of 3:57.34 to move to fourth on the US all-time list.

Laura Muir ran a season’s best of 3:58.18 to finish second. British 1500m champion Laura Weightman was seventh in 4:01.76 and Eilish McColgan eighth in 4:01.98.

Also competing at Lausanne on Friday night was Flintshire-raised 400m runner Owen Smith.

The Cardiff AAC athlete produced an excellent performance to finish third in a high quality B race.

Olympic and world championships medallist Martyn Rooney took the win in 46.17, while Smith clocked in at 46.90 – the latest of a series of sub-47 performances he has turned in this season.

Earlier this campaign, the Matt Elias coached sprinter ran at the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham and in May came within 0.01 of a second from beating his personal best of 46.23.