Great Britain’s fastest woman Dina Asher-Smith and European Indoor 60m champion Richard Kilty will lead their bid for glory at this month’s European Athletics Team Championships in Cheboksary.
The duo are part of a 47-strong line-up as Britain look to build on their fifth place in Braunschweig 12 months ago.
Asher-Smith, 19, the world junior 100m champion and European junior 200m champion, made a sensational start to this outdoor season by breaking the British 100m record when she finished second in 11.02 behind Netherlands’ Dafne Schippers in 10.94 in Hengelo just over a week ago.
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It was another major statement by an athlete whose junior golds have shown how well she is progressing on the path to senior success.
When she ran the 11.02, she could not believe it.
I was looking at Dafne’s time and thought ‘that’s amazing’. But I knew I wasn’t anywhere near that. My time flashed up a little bit later. I wasn’t expecting to run that. I was really happy.
Kilty has proved himself to be the best sprinter of the last two winters, by winning world 60m gold in Sopot in 2014 before his European triumph in 6.51 in Prague in March.
He was part of the British team which triumphed in the 4x100m relay at the European Athletics Championships in Zurich last summer and is determined to stake a claim for individual 100m success this year.
Cheboksary will give him another chance to showcase his talent on the big stage in a British squad that sees the return of 2012 European high jump champion Robbie Grabarz.
As Asher-Smith takes to the start line, one of the rivals she will face is an athlete who is set to have busy weekend in Russia on June 20-21.
Belarusian Alina Talay has been selected to run in the 100m, 100m hurdles and the 4x100m relay for a nation who were promoted to the Super League after winning the First League in Tallinn last June.
Talay had a brilliant winter, topped by her winning the 60m hurdles in Prague in a national record of 7.85.
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But she is no stranger to European medal success outdoors, either. In Helsinki in 2012, she was second in the 100m hurdles at the European Athletics Championships and in Kaunas in 2009, she won bronze at the European Athletics U23 Championships.
Her teammate Marina Arzamasova is the 800m European champion after her superb victory at the Letzigrund Stadium came in a summer where she also won the event at the European Athletics Team Championships.
She is back looking for maximum points again in a Belarus squad that includes Volha Sudareva, who reached the long jump final in Zurich.