Teenage mile maestro Corey Campbell will take to the track for his first competitive outing of 2024 in Boston next weekend when he returns to the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix taking place on Saturday 3 February.
And the 17-year-old will have a spring in his stride not just because it is the meeting where, in 2023, he gained a Commonwealth Youth Games qualifying time.
On this occasion he will have spent the first three weeks of 2024 undertaking warm weather training in Potchefstroom, South Africa, at the same camp as fellow Scot Jake Wightman, the 2022 world 1,500 metres champion.
Corey, who became world record holder for the mile at under-15 age group in 2022 running 4.05.77 returned to his Dunbar home in latish January and talked targets for 2024 in an exclusive interview with the Edinburgh Reporter.
Top of the agenda will be another qualification –this time for the World Junior Championships in Lima, Peru, in August where he hopes to compete at 1500m and 3000m.
Also, another age-group mile record is very much on the wish list.
“I missed out on attempting the under-16 mile best partly because I didn’t run in the Monument Mile at Stirling where I set the under-15 record but I also tore the top portion of my quad muscle at a crucial time.
“Despite this I did run a 1500m P.B. of 3m 45secs which converts to a 4.02 or 0.3 mile.
“So, yes, getting under the four minute mile barrier remains a big deal.
“Heading for Boston I am happy with my training and quietly confident. I support myself.
“The camp itself was exceptionally structured and the only problem was switching from winter to summer which meant early sun-rises affecting sleep!
“I was under the direction of coach Matt Yates who is a friend of my own coach at East Lothian AC, Alastair Russell, and it was good to be in the company of lots of nationalities looking across and seeing the likes of Jake Wightman and Keely Hodgkinson.”
Keely was just 19 when she won an Olympic 800m silver in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics perhaps proving that teenage years need be no barrier to top honours for Corey who has switched from school in Edinburgh (George Heriot’s) to Dunbar Grammar for S6 in order to ensure travel time can now be spent doing more training and preparing for athletics.
Evergreen sports journalist. Previously published in many publications around the world. Send me your local sports stories. billlothian1008@gmail.com
