MUSTANG SALLY

Gunnell looks back on 1993 world record gold and calls for Hodgkinson to be positive

- ALEX SPINK

SALLY GUNNELL still remembers how it felt, waking up with a cough and a sniffle inside the athletes village. Not feeling at all herself.

Olympic Reigning champion, she was favourite to add the 400m hurdles world title in Stuttgart. She knew it, everybody did.

Beside her bed was a bar of chocolate she had brought from her Swiss training camp as a treat to devour when, not if, she delivered the gold.

But she suddenly felt lousy and the pressure from having won in Barcelona the previous summer weighed heavy.

That was 30 years ago and what Gunnell put herself through mentally to become world champion she now wants to pass on in the hope Keely Hodgkinson (right) and others might follow in her footsteps at the 2023 edition in Budapest which starts on Saturday.

Unlike Gunnell in 1993, Hodgkinson is fit and primed for her tilt at the 800m.