'Devastated' Lewis-Francis out of Olympics

Mark Lewis-Francis will miss this year's Olympic Games after suffering an Achilles tendon injury which will require an operation, it was revealed yesterday.

The 25-year-old sprinter, who anchored the British sprint relay team to gold at the last Olympics, has partially torn his tendon while warm weather training in Cyprus and is reported to be "devastated" that his chances of appearing at this summer's Games in Beijing have gone. The news will come as a huge blow to the current British sprint relay squad. "Mark's been flying in training and was really preparing himself well for the Olympics," said Dave Collins, the UK Athletics performance director.

After an outstanding early career in which he won the world 100m junior title in 2000 and was tipped as a future Olympic 100m gold medallist by the then reigning champion Donovan Bailey, Lewis-Francis struggled to convert the huge promise into achievement.

Achilles tendon problems and issues with his weight have hindered his progress in recent years, and his 100m personal best still stands at the 10.04sec he recorded as a 19-year-old.

Despite his outstanding run over the final leg of the relay in Athens, where he held off the challenge of the then world record holder Maurice Greene, Lewis-Francis ran into trouble the following year when he tested positive for cannabis after the European Indoor Championships, earning a warning and being stripped of his 60m silver medal. But the following year Lewis-Francis earned back his right to compete in the Olympics when the British Olympic Association, whose byelaw makes athletes guilty of serious doping offences ineligible to compete in any Games, accepted that the cannabis had not been taken to enhance performance.

For all his efforts to regain his previous levels of performance, Lewis-Francis has struggled recently to perform in the individual event, but has retained his value as a relay runner, earning a silver medal at last year's World Championships, when Britain missed out on the title to Jamaica by just one hundredth of a second. But the ill-starred nature of Lewis-Francis's career emerged again last December when he admitted in the wake of the suspension of Christine Ohuruogu for missing three dope-testing appointments that he had missed two himself, thus leaving himself one further failure away from a year's suspension.

According to reports, Lewis-Francis has been in tremendous form in Cyprus, but he will now look to events beyond Beijing. Of the four-man team which earned gold in Athens, only Marlon Devonish is likely to figure in Beijing, with Lewis-Francis out injured and Jason Gardener and Darren Campbell retired.