Athletics: Knee injury ends Millar's sprint

Joseph Millar wins the NZ Athletics Nationals 100m title from Kodi Harman. Photo/File

Joseph Millar's dream of competing in the 100m-200m sprint double at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow is over.

The 21-year from Papamoa, who won the national 100 metres title for the third straight year, missed the games' standards after a summer battling a niggling knee injury he picked up running at the New Year's Day meeting at the Tauranga Domain.

Millar got close to the Commonwealth Games standards in his specialist events, running 10.39 in the 100m (standard 10.21) and 20.81 in the 200m (standard 20.60).

"The knee injury, which has hampered me from producing my absolute best this season, struggled to settle down and did not allow me to move as freely as I would have liked," Millar said. "When I reached top speed it started to restrict my movement.

"It was getting quite stressful because the injury wasn't going away, and crunch time was even closer and closer. I feel like I know what I could have done and I know some important areas I need to improve on, to actually run better times.

"The silver lining is I now get the whole year to really work on things and making sure I get everything right so hopefully I can set some times to reflect the hard work I am putting in.

"You don't want to be running the Commonwealth Games standards. You want to be so good that the standards are what you hit even if you are having a bad day."

But Millar may have an unlikely Commonwealth Games lifeline in the 4x400m relay team.

He is in the frame for the team after the selectors asked him to trial last month. Despite a virus and not training for weeks, Millar did a PB by half a second in clocking 46.99s to become the fourth fastest Kiwi over 400m this season.

No decision has been reached to send the team or not but Millar is hopeful.

Millar credits his training partner Codi Harman (second fastest New Zealander sprinter) as one of the reasons why he continues to improve.

"Not a lot of other people around the country train with someone with the ability to beat them on any given day. Neither Cody or me want to let the other get to the line first so because it is so competitive, we are training a lot harder without realising it.

"The better he gets the better I have to be and vice versa."