March 5, 2008

Three months ago Tyler Christopher had absolutely no intention of competing at the 2008 IAAF World Indoor Championships but the 24-year-old Canadian arrives in Valencia today with a gold medal in mind.

Competing in Birmingham, UK, on 16 February Christopher blazed a personal best indoors 400m time of 45.80 seconds – the fastest in the world this year - and his plans quickly changed.

“I thought it would be good preparation and a way to break up the long period of training back to back and see how it goes,” he explains. “The world indoors were this year so I thought I would give it a shot.”

National record ‘unexpected’

That he will do. Despite a loss in Stockholm where he placed third in 46.75 he believes he is in good enough shape to bring home the gold medal.

“The 45.80, it wasn’t unexpected,” he declares serving up a warning to his peers. “I kind of wanted to go faster but the only reason I didn’t was, not because of my fitness, it was more my inexperience at running that race. I got locked into where I was during the race. Normally after 200 metres I get into a relaxed mode and there I ran hard for about 300 metres and then realized, "oh crap!"  That was the reason I ran 45.80, it was just inexperience.”