Beth Dobbin surged to fourth in the women’s 200 metres at the Diamond League leg in Stockholm on Sunday in her last tune-up before the Tokyo Olympics.
The Scottish record holder, 27, clocked 22.84 seconds at the Bauhaus Galan meeting – the sixth-quickest time of her career – to finish just shy of her season’s best.
Jamaica’s Shericka Jackson, expected to be one of Dina Asher-Smith’s main rivals for gold in Japan later this month, took victory in 22.10.
With Laura Muir and Jemma Reekie opting out of travelling to the Swedish capital, Keely Hodgkinson produced a European Under-20 record of 1:57.51 that was still only good enough for fourth in the women’s 800m.
The English teenager, who overhauled the Scots to take the British title in Manchester eight days ago, leapfrogged Lynsey Sharp to leap into third in the UK’s all-time rankings with Cuba’s Rose Mary Almanza running the second-quickest time of 2021 of 1:56.28 to come out ahead.
Olympics-bound Elliot Giles was third in the men’s 800m in Stockholm in a lifetime best of 1:44.05, elevating him to eleventh in the UK all-time list, with Kenya’s Ferguson Rotich landing first place.
“I just didn’t have that kick at the end - I almost had it,” the Brummie said. “But Rotich is a vet, isn’t he? He’s strong so I couldn’t quite get there. I was a bit scatty. I was in a good position but I was a bit surgy trying to get the inside lane.”
Holly Bradshaw was runner-up in the women’s pole vault with a best of 4.61m, CJ Ujah came third in the men’s 100m in 10.10 secs while Femke Bol’s Dutch record of 52.38 secs to win the 400m hurdles made her the fourth-fastest female in the event in history.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here