England runner Daniel Awde has expressed his delight at having helped the team into the 4x400m relay final at Hampden Park tomorrow night.
Awde ran the first leg for the team as they cruised into the final, beating the much-fancied Jamaicans in their heat with a time of 3:03.01.
The 26-year-old, who is a relative newcomer to the England relay scene, was happy with the display overall but told Sports Mole that there is still plenty more to come.
.jpg?w=640&h=480&auto=compress,format&fit=clip "Daniel Awde")
Are you happy with that performance?
"Yeah. Really happy. I was saying earlier on, I'm a novice to the Games, I think we did really well. We came through and we won. The fastest to qualify."
Was that simply a case of making sure you got the baton around safely rather than making a statement?
"Yeah. We've got two guys here who are novices. The most relay I've done is in British League, and the other guy's done the same. We're two young guys, first time out. We didn't want to muck it up, so happy days."
You were in a heat alongside the Jamaicans. Was there a temptation to race against them rather than focusing solely on getting your own job done?
"Kinda. You want to get a good lane in the final, no doubt, you kind of want to stretch out your legs a little bit.
"I can't speak for the rest of the guys but I didn't want to max out, I just got myself going to see how I rolled and got the job done. We wanted to be safe. We needed to make sure we made no mistakes and qualified."
What sort of percentage would you say you were going at there?
"85, 80%. Plenty more to come. I'm quite used to the crowd making noise and I know the buzz it normally gives me, so you don't have to chop your strides and feel like you're moving quickly, you just have to roll. Then you just fly."
That crowd out there was pretty special, though, are you used to them making that much noise?
"To be fair, it's all for the Scottish but you feed off it as well. It's kind of nice that we were in the same heats because we get the noise as well. You just rise to the occasion."
The final of the men's 4x400m relay is scheduled to take place at 10.10pm tomorrow night.
Barney Corkhill
