Buck stops here in race for glory

The 25-year-old York sprinter lost UK Athletics funding worth approximately £20,000 two months ago, leaving his Olympic hopes in tatters.

But rather than sit sulking on the sidelines, the gritty Yorkshireman, who has a clutch of international indoor medals to his name, knuckled down and took a job at the supermarket to help fund his chances.

Buck works 15 hours a week in the Tesco express store just around the corner from his training base at Loughborough University.

He also trains around 35 hours a week, including three hours before his five-hour shift on the shop floor yesterday, and an hour afterwards.

It will all be worth it if he lines up alongside Jamaica’s triple Olympic champion Bolt as part of the Great Britain team in next year’s 4x400m relay.

Britain finished fourth in the race four years ago when Buck was an unused member of the squad, so are genuine contenders for a medal.

Standing on the podium next summer in front of an adoring public inside the Olympic Stadium would cap quite a journey for the Grimsby-born, Pickering-raised City of York sprinter.

“It’s a bit of a challenge to fit it all in and staying fresh,” he said of juggling his time when the majority of his team-mates and competitors are working non-stop towards London 2012.

“Tesco are really good with the hours I work and fitting it all in, and my line manager says we can always make it work when I have competitions, taking unpaid leave etc.

“They’ll find a way to get me where I want to go. Everyone in the store is really supportive.

“The only thing is fatigue. I end up doing 45-50 hours a week with the training and working. It’s not something I envisaged a year before the Olympics.

“But to be honest, I’m finding the break from track and field, especially with all the pressures that come with it, to be quite good. When I get to Tesco I can concentrate on something completely different. No-one is hassling me about track and field, I’m not looking at the track wondering if I should be doing more or doing things differently.

“You can go into you own little space and it’s a mental break. In a roundabout way it might be a good thing for me.

“A home Olympics is the best thing you could ever envisage. So that’s why I’m doing this now – pushing myself through the hard times.

“I’m not the only one, there’s loads of people all over the country doing the same.

“Things might be hard and going against you but as long as people are willing to do what they can do to get by, to get onto the next stage, then everything will come good. It’s one year of tightening the belt and pushing through.

“It’s worth it to me because it’s a lifelong dream to at least have a shot at it.”

Buck was one of four 400m runners cut by UK Athletics. It means he has to go his own way in terms of training camps and full-on schedules, but he does have access at Loughborough – and at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield where he trains once a week – to the country’s top coaches. And the rebuff from the governing body has created a siege mentality inside him.

He said: “I’m pushing myself harder because it’s an Olympic Games and I’m pushing myself a little harder than that because it’s a home Olympics.

“And then I’m pushing myself even harder than that because I feel like things are going against me a little bit. I feel I have something to prove, to get to London and say ‘you shouldn’t have dropped me from funding’.

“I want to come back stronger than ever and I want to run faster than I’ve ever run before.

“Everything is making me hungry. I don’t hold any grudges because I’m thankful for all the support I’ve had in the past, and I’m thankful for the fact that I’ve been made so hungry.

“I’ve got a point to prove. I’m the first at training and the last one out of the door.”

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