• Chosen in 4x400m relay squad after two years in doldrums
• Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah also picked for Istanbul next month
Great Britain's squad for the World Indoor Championships was announced and alongside Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis and Dwain Chambers there was one famous name that has not been much heard of in recent months. The Olympic 400m champion, Christine Ohuruogu, has been included in the 4x400m relay team, despite competing in only two 60m races this season. The head coach, Charles van Commenee, believes that after a slump that has lasted two seasons Ohuruogu is beginning to find something close to her best form again, just when it matters.
"I have seen a lot of her in training and it is definitely better than she has been doing over the last few years," Van Commenee said. "So she deserves selection almost without thinking because she is definitely in that group. She has been under the radar in terms of publicity but not under the radar in terms of the head coach."
As for Farah and Ennis, Van Commenee thinks both will have improved for recent defeats. Farah lost to Kenya's Eliud Kipchoge over two miles in Birmingham last weekend whereas much of Ennis's training this winter has been shaped by her defeat by Tatyana Chernova in last year's World Championships in Daegu.
"It is quite normal that athletes get beaten and it is quite healthy as well, especially five months before the Games," Van Commenee said. "There is this assumption that Mo is unbeatable but that assumption is only in Britain. I don't think that in Kenya or Ethiopia people take the same view. It will happen every now and again, as we have seen in Daegu." Ennis, he says, "is more challenged than ever before. Similarly to Mo Farah it is not a problem to lose so long as she learns lessons from it."
Whether Ohuruogu has learned from the hard times she has been through remains to be seen. She ran those two 60m races at the Birmingham Games on 4 February. Before that her last competition was the World Championships. She ran the slowest leg – by over a second – for the relay team, who finished fourth, and was disqualified when she false-started in the heats of the individual event.
"Christine is mentally very strong as she has proven at previous World Championships and Olympic Games," Van Commenee said of her disqualification in Daegu. "I would not say she is damaged at all. It is something you get motivation from. She will use it as extra fuel."
Ohuruogu, who is 27, ran 49.62 seconds when she won her Olympic title and 49.61 when she won her world title in 2009. She has broken 51secs only three times in the last two years. If she can recapture anything close to her best form, she could help push the relay team up from the fourth place they took at the World Championships and on to the Olympic podium, and that would give van Commenee a huge boost in his hunt for those eight medals he has said his team will deliver.
Van Commenee says the world indoors are "a useful event to get information from but not the beginning and end of all things". For the relay squads, though, these championships matter a little more than that. "This is a really good opportunity to have the girls together and see how far off we are from the three nations that usually dominate the event, the United States, Jamaica and Russia. It is important to have the athletes together who have to do the damage half a year from now." He will use similar thinking for the European Championships in Helsinki at the end of June, when the relay squads will be one of the few components of the team that is at full strength. With their history of blunders and baton-drops, they need all the opportunities they can get for practice.
Otherwise the aspect of Istanbul that intrigues Van Commenee the most will be watching how the younger athletes get on. He picked out the high jumper Robbie Grabarz, who has cleared 2.34m this season, 800m runners Andrew Osagie and Joe Thomas and the pole vaulter Holly Bleasdale as athletes whom he would be watching closely to see how they cope with the pressures of a major international meeting. The sprinter Jodie Williams, who has earned her place only because the UK indoor champion Jeanette Kwakye is injured, is another who could make a breakthrough.
Great Britain team
Men 60m Dwain Chambers, *Andy Robertson; 400m Nigel Levine, Richard Buck; 800m Joe Thomas, Andrew Osagie; 1500m Lewis Moses, James Brewer; 3,000m Mo Farah; 60m hurdles Andy Pozzi;
High jump Samson Oni, Robbie Grabarz; Pole vault Steve Lewis, *Andrew Sutcliffe; Long jump *JJ Jegede; 4x400m Nigel Levine, Richard Buck, Conrad Williams, Michael Bingham, James Forman, Luke Lennon Ford. Women 60m Asha Philip, Jodie Williams; 400m Shana Cox, Nadine Okyere; 800m Marilyn Okoro; 3,000m Helen Clitheroe; 60m hurdles Tiffany Porter; Pole vault Holly Bleasdale, Katie Byres; Long jump Shara Proctor; Triple jump Yamile Aldama; Pentathlon Jessica Ennis; 4x400m Shana Cox, Nadine Okyere, Nicola Sanders, Christine Ohuruogu, Perri Shakes-Drayton, Laura Langowski.
*Subject to qualification standards being achieved