Gibraltar athlete Craig Gill produces a personal best to come close to breaking eleven second barrier

With a massive field in which the first round saw ten heats run, Gibraltar’s Craig Gill already faced a difficult task. His 11.23 qualifying time was among one of the slowest among competitors. From the start of the heats with times ranging from 10.06 to 10.98s in general, with few above the 11 second mark Gibraltar’s athlete best hopes was to produce a personal best.
Gill’s biggest objective was to use the competition as a chance to challenge himself to pick up a personal best and try and break the eleven second barrier which he had yet to beat.
The young athlete whose preparations have been mainly in the UK during his studies with limited track training and competition in Gibraltar due to the delays in completing the Lathbury athletics track has meant that his preparations were not quite as complete as officials had hoped.
The loss of Jesus Franco and Jerai Torres from competitive athletics in Gibraltar also reducing the competition he faced on the track in a Gibraltar to compete.
Craig Gill, however, has impressed with his constant development and discipline overcoming the many obstacles which have been placed before him in his preparations as he headed to the Commonwealth Games.
Craig Gill was to race in a heat including runners from Scotland, Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica among others.
The whole of his heat’s field having qualifying times below the eleven second mark.
Craig Gill was to provide a string performance maintaining pace with the main bulk of runners into the first 60m before losing some ground in the latter part, although not leaving too much of a gap between himself and the tailend of the pack of runners as had been seen in other heats.
Craig achieved a personal best with an 11.09 and coming the closest he has in the past two seasons since Jesse Franco and Jerai Torres broke the eleven second barrier to also break this milestone mark of Gibraltar sprinters.
Craig was to finish 64th overall from 80 runners competing, 70 who completed their races. With some six runners clocking times higher than himself. A minor ranking success for Gibraltar athletics in this competition.