Athletics: Golden boys return: Berlin Grand Prix

TWO OF Britain's three world champions return to action tonight in the Berlin Grand Prix, the third of the self-styled 'golden four' meetings.

While Sally Gunnell, the 400 metres hurdles champion, is sensibly giving herself more time to recover from a cold as she looks forward to Sunday's McDonald's Games in Sheffield, Linford Christie and Colin Jackson face familiar opposition over 100m and 110m hurdles respectively.

Jackson faces the best of the men he left in his wake in Stuttgart as he set his world record of 12.91sec, plus his training partner, Mark McKoy.

Having helped Jackson and Christie prepare for the World Championships at their training base in Monte Carlo, McKoy is now fit enough to test his old friend out. Last year, Jackson defeated McKoy only a week after finishing seventh to him in the Olympics; this year he can do the same, secure in the knowledge that he has proved himself at the highest level.

Christie faces the Stuttgart bronze medallist, Dennis Mitchell, and the man who pipped him on the line in Zurich, Leroy Burrell.

David Grindley may have recovered from the calf injury which kept him out of the World Championships. The meeting offers him the opportunity to pick up where he left off just before the championships began, when he finished second behind Michael Johnson over 400m in Zurich, and ahead of the other top Americans, Butch Reynolds and Quincy Watts.

Two athletes have talked of breaking world records - a relatively modest total these days. Moses Kiptanui has his own 3,000m record of 7min 28.96sec in his sights; Noureddine Morceli is again after Steve Cram's eight-year-old mile record of 3:46.32.

Morceli is one of eight athletes who can still win all or a share of the 20 gold bars on offer to those winning at all of the Golden Four meetings - Oslo, Zurich, Berlin and Brussels.