Athletics: McConnell takes the great leap forwards

Move to the track has turned high jumper into a one-lap wonder of the world. Simon Turnbull speaks to her

It is not even two years yet since the women's 400m race that stole the spotlight at the Sydney Olympics. Lee McConnell can recall watching the one-lap drama on television at home in King's Park, a Glasgow suburb near to Hampden and its famous football stadium. That was on 25 September 2000. A fortnight earlier McConnell had competed for the Great Britain Under-23 team against Spain in Getafe. She finished third in the high jump, one place behind Susan Jones.

Paula Radcliffe might have produced the performance of the European Championships in Munich the week before last but McConnell holds a strong claim to having beenthe star British performer. Indeed, Max Jones, the head coach of the British team in the Bavarian capital, had no hesitation when asked to pick out his personal highlight of the six-day meeting. "Lee McConnell coming into world class," he said. "To me, there's nothing quite like the thrill of seeing new people coming through, as Lee has done in Munich."

McConnell, in fact, was already emerging as a world- class quarter-miler before she came through to take the 400m bronze medal in Munich, behind Olesya Zykina of Russia and Grit Breuer of Germany.

In the Commonwealth Games final that had long been anticipated as a rematch of the Sydney battle between Cathy Freeman, Lorraine Fenton, Katharine Merry and Donna Fraser, the young Scotswoman finished in the silver medal position, just 0.05sec down on the victorious Aliann Pompey of Guyana.

Less than two years into her new athletics career, the former high jumper lines up in the Norwich Union International meeting on home ground at Scotstoun Stadium in Glasgow today as the proud possessor of two major championship medals as a 400m runner.

She also has an invitation to run the 400m for Europe at the World Cup in Madrid on 21-22 September – an honour which has fallen to just six other women in the 25-year history of the global contest. The first three were Irena Szewinska, Jarmila Kratochvilova and Marie Jose-Pérec.

From Fosbury flopping on the fringe of the Great Britain senior team to following in the footsteps of quarter-miling legends, McConnell has come a long way since the night she watched Cathy Freeman win the Sydney Olympic final. "I watched that race and thought, 'I would love to be there one day'," she reflected. "At that point I was thinking about the 400m but I certainly didn't think I'd be doing it at this level quite so soon."

Indeed not. It was as a high jumper that McConnell always dreamed of standing on a major championship medal podium, but when she failed to jump 1.90m by the end of the 2000 season she decided to switch to the 400m – despite having won the Scottish high jump title for a third successive year and moved second to Jayne Barnetson on the Scottish all-time ranking list with a clearance of 1.88m.

She started last year with a personal best of 53.81sec and – while improving to 52.05sec and finishing sixth in the World Student Games rated as highly impressive progress – the Loughborough University graduate hardly finished her first year of serious 400m running as a likely contender for honours in 2002.

She was ranked fifth in Britain, 23rd in the Commonwealth, 26th in Europe and 61st in the world. But, then, to the eye of the discerning track and field follower, the qualities that have hallmarked McConnell's rise to prominence this summer – her smooth-striding action, her acute sense of pace judgement and her ability to produce a strong finish – were already in evidence.

In the past two months McConnell – a figure skater of some promise before she turned to the high jump – has been gathering momentum all the way. She clocked 51.59 sec to win the AAA title, 51.29sec in her Commonwealth semi-final, 51.24sec in her European heat and 51.02sec in the final in Munich. Then there was the 50.00sec split, with the benefit of a rolling start, in the 4 x 400m relay final in the Olympiastadion last Sunday.

Stunning though her progress has already been, there is clearly still a lot more to come from the long-legged Glaswegian, who finished a highly creditable sixth in 51.29sec on her Golden League debut at the Weltklasse meeting in Zurich on Friday night.

"I always sort of believed that I would do well at the 400," McConnell said. "This year I thought I would reach the final at the Commonwealth Games and at the European Championships but I didn't think I would medal in both. I didn't think I'd be running the 400 for Europe either. To run for Scotland in the Commonwealth Games, Britain in the European Championships and Europe in the World Cup is a great honour. I'm chuffed with that.

"That 50sec relay split in Munich has given me a lot of confidence. I really think I can beat the Scottish record now [Allison Curbishley's national mark of 50.71sec has stood since 1998]. I'm only 23. I'll be 25 when the Athens Olympics comes round, so I think I've got a good few years in me."

Despite the high-speed progress McConnell has made under her two coaches, Alan Scobie and Roger Harkins, it is fair to say that she still has a good bit of room for improvement too. That much was brought home to her in Munich when she met Michael Johnson, the greatest quarter-miler of all time.

"He told me that one of my arms was coming across the front of me when I ran, like I was getting ready to take off in the high jump," McConnell said. "He showed me on video how it was making me twist when I ran."

The 400m master also told the 400m novice that he was expecting her to "come through" at world level in the next couple of years. After her medal-winning stops in Manchester and Munich, the Flying Scotswoman is already well on the way.