She is happy though that USADA’s crusade is helping to purge track and field It’s a positive thing she says with

She is happy, though, that USADA’s crusade is helping to purge track and field “It’s a positive thing,” she says, with no pun intended. Last week, Jacobs announced her retirement, before being banned for four years by the United States Anti-Doping Agency and having her performances annulled dating back to her positive test – at the US Championships in June 2003.Holmes had hoped Jacobs’ results for the whole of 2003 would be declared void. Realistically, I have to be in 3min 58sec shape to be in contention. That’s what I’m focusing on at the moment: trying to get to that standard.”That focus means ignoring the possibility – for the time being at least – of once again being kept off the top step of the podium by a drugs cheat. Yegorova tested positive for the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin two years ago but escaped punishment on a technicality – the testers had not taken a blood sample to back up the urine test. At the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham in March last year, Holmes took the silver medal behind Regina Jacobs, who subsequently tested positive for the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone.

In 2002 Ayhan just came from nowhere, and there’s nothing you can do about that You can only control what you do. She won gold with a stunning front-running display, and her first race of 2004 is expected to be in the 1500m heats in Athens.”That’s the most scary thing,” Holmes says “You don’t know what people are doing You don’t even know if they’re actually going to be there. I’ve got to run the best that I possibly can, and at the moment I don’t feel that I am I know I’ve got to buck my ideas up. It is competition that is killing the goose that laid the golden egg.”The most serious bear argument against the banking sector is the lack of growth and potential for earnings downgrades as a result of a consumer slowdown and increasing competition,” says Robert Law, a banking analyst at Lehman Brothers.The consumer debt market has in the past been dominated by a handful of big banks. If they want a mortgage, customers tend to shop around, but if they want an unsecured loan to, say, buy a car or pay for a holiday, most people go to their bank. This has meant that the big four lenders – Lloyds TSB, Barclays, HSBC and NatWest (now part of Royal Bank of Scotland) – have had the lion’s share of the business.For smaller purchases, a lot of people borrow money on their credit cards.

Two years ago, Ayhan arrived at the European Championships in Munich without any racing experience that summer. Elvan Abeylegesse, who clocked 3min 58.28sec in Moscow in May, is expected to concentrate on the 5,000m, the distance at which she set a world record in Bergen in June (and the final of which takes place on 23 August, the day before the 1500m heats).The Russian Olga Yegorova stands next on the world ranking list, with 4:01.15, but it is the unknown form of Abeylegesse’s Turkish team-mate Sureyya Ayhan that Holmes fears most of all With good reason. Only one of her rivals has broken four minutes for the distance, and she is unlikely to contest the event in Athens. Contrary to popular perception, though, the marathon world record-holder might not be the one and only golden shot for British athletics glory in Athens.Given the clouded state of the form book thus far this summer, the race for the women’s 1500m title could be wide open. It has not escaped her attention, though, that a dominant force has yet to emerge in the women’s 1500m this summer. If I can focus on myself and do what I’m capable of doing, we’ll just see what happens. That’s all I can say.”Holmes has been focusing on herself in recent weeks, training hard at an altitude of 1,860m at a ski resort in the Sierra de Guadarrama, between Segovia and Madrid.