Dunfermline Press | Sport | Nicol named Scotland’s u23 athlete of the year

Tuesday, 6th January, 2009

Published: Thursday, 23rd November, 2006 12:00

Nicol named Scotland’s u23 athlete of the year

By Sportsdesk

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IT’S not been a bad week for athlete Gemma Nicol.

The 20-year-old track ace from Dunfermline bagged two national awards and was then told by athletics legend Michael Johnson that her running style was similar to his.

It all started for Gemma, like Johnson, a 400 metres runner, last week when she picked up the outstanding female achievement award in the Highland Games’ Scottish Games Awards 2006.

Then, along with other members of the Bank of Scotland Talented Young Athlete Programme, she headed off to Edinburgh on Friday to meet the five-time Olympic gold medalist. Ninety minutes later she was at the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow to be put through her paces in a practical coaching session led by Johnson.

And then the following night at Glasgow’s Marriott Hotel, Gemma was named Bank of Scotland under-23 athlete of the year.

“It was quite intimidating meeting him (Johnson) just because of his status in athletics,” Gemma told Press Sport.

“He gave us a lot of tips and spoke about how he got to the top and what help he got.”

Johnson led eight of Scotland’s top young track athletes, including Gemma, in a series of sprint differentials and was then able to tailor tips on individual running styles to each athlete’s coach.

“He didn’t say anything to me but he told JB (Gemma’s coach, Jimmy Bryce), ‘What can I say? She runs like me’.” It was quite an honour for someone like Michael Johnson to say I ran in a similar way to him.”

Being named under-23 athlete of the year topped off the weekend and came after a year in which Gemma finished second in the AAAs senior championships and clocked a PB of 53.46. Now she’s working on upping that to the 52.75 she needs to qualify for next year’s European under-23 championships.

“It’s a big jump but I’ve changed my training so I’ve been getting one-to-one strength and conditioning twice a week and that’s really helped,” she explained.

“I’ve also just had some dynamic profiling done and that’s shown an improvement in my posture. I used to be a gymnast where I had to lean back but as a runner you lean forward and it’s trying to improve that.

“Over the winter I’ll be doing beach work, hills and weights but I’m hoping to go away for warm weather training in April.”

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