17 February 2016

Scottish star to compete in 800m at the Emirates Arena on Saturday 20 February

Scottish 1500m record holder Laura Muir (coach: Andy Young) is excited about the prospect of taking on a world class field at the Glasgow Indoor Grand Prix, the last leg of the IAAF World Indoor Tour, on Saturday.

The 22 year old will face a strong field including Canada’s World Championships silver medallist Melissa Bishop, current world leader Joanna Jozwik and IAAF World Championships finalist Shelayna Oskan-Clarke (Jon Bigg).

Muir said: “I’m looking forward to it; it’s going to be a really top class field so I’m looking forward to getting out there and testing myself against the best in the field. It will be good experience to see where I’m at.

“This event will allow me to test myself against a really high quality field. A couple of races I’ve done have just been in Scotland and I’ve had to run by myself so it will be good to push myself against other athletes and get into that racing mind-set again ahead of the summer.”

This will be the first time that the Indoor Grand Prix has been staged in Glasgow following its move from Birmingham, and is also bidding to host the European Indoor Championships in 2019. Muir believes the city is ready to host such big events and build on the success of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

She continued: “I love competing on home soil and it’s not often you get to do it in such a big competition. It’s the biggest competition in the world for indoor meets so I’m really looking forward to it and it’s a great line-up.

“Glasgow showed in the Commonwealth Games that support athletes get in Scotland is amazing and fingers crossed for the Euros bid in 2019. I think we’d be a great host and hopefully this weekend will show what sort of competition they can stage.”

Muir will be one of seven Scots competing at the Glasgow Indoor Grand Prix along with Andrew Butchart (Derek Easton), Zoey Clark (Eddie McKenna), Sarah Inglis (John Lees), Stephanie Twell (Mick Woods), Josephine Moultrie (William Parker), Guy Learmonth (Rob Denmark) and Madeleine Murray (Lees).