Sprint star Monty out to pass 11-plus at the festival of athletics

The British 100 metres record Kathy Cook set took 27 years to surpass. The record Montell Douglas set may not last beyond Saturday. Not if she has anything to do with it.

Douglas — ‘my nickname’s Monty’ — is determined to run quicker at Saturday's Aviva London Grand Prix than the 11.05sec she achieved at Loughborough last Thursday. ‘I definitely want to go quicker. I think there is a sub-11 there,’ she says.

‘Eleven’ is to women sprinters what ‘10’ is to men — the barrier to world class. Douglas, 22, is the first Briton since Cook to threaten it and to her it is the Holy Grail, ‘my career goal’.

In the heat before she ran her record time, she saw the time of 10.99 on the clock. ‘It was a shock,’ she says. ‘You never look for 10 on the clock as you pass, only 11-something. So when I saw 10 I thought: “That must be wrong”.’

The time was not wrong but it did not count as a legitimate record because the wind exceeded that allowed. So, for now, her best is the 11.05sec, a time that did not surprise the South Londoner despite beating Cook’s record by .05sec.

She expected it five days earlier at the Olympic Trials but despite winning did not go close to the record. Afterwards she thought she ‘wasn’t going to the Olympics because I’d only done the qualifying standard once’.

Her remaining chance was at Loughborough, graveyard of sprinters. Run fast or give up on the dream of the 100m in Beijing. It did not help it was on the day she was graduating with a BSc in sports science from Brunel University.

‘It was cloudy, overcast, raining on the walk to the track, not warm at all. People were shocked that I did it at Loughborough as much as the time. But it was there in me and that just happened to be where it came out.’

Douglas always believed she would do something special with her life. Dancing was the first goal. Theatre was another thought but given that she speaks as she runs she would have abridged the complete works of Shakespeare to a short story.

Athletics took over when she found high jumping but after two appearances at the English Schools championships, back problems put paid to that. So Douglas returned to the championships twice as a sprinter, winning the second time.

What to watch out for at the Palace

Contemporaries ‘more talented than me’ were Amy Spencer, first BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year, and Vernicha James, world junior 200m champion. Neither is still running.

Douglas says: ‘Girls when they become women think sport is sweaty, big muscles and there’s lots of peer pressure. And if they’re a very good junior, they usually want it now, they aren’t prepared to wait for success as a senior. So they give up. What I’m achieving has taken six years’ work.’

She flat shares now in North London with training partner, Marilyn Okoro, another of the generation who survived those teenage pressures to be Beijing-bound. ‘Talent comes in different forms and at different times. At 16, 17, I was doing 11.77,’ she said.

‘I just had a talent that came out when it did, a little bit of talent and a lot of hard work and it came eventually. This record is for years of grafting.’

What surprised her is how it felt to beat the record set by Cook that had defeated three generations. ‘It wasn’t that hard,’ she admits.

So at Crystal Palace, where she trained as a teenager, she makes her debut against the fastest sprinters in the world, including two current world champions and one former world champion. ‘I’ve always wanted to be there. Now it’s my chance and I’m in shape. I just hope it’s good weather.’

And beyond beckons Beijing. The final is the aim ‘and once you’re there anything can happen’.