By Simon Turnbull, Athletics Correspondent 13 February 2005
As Kelly Sotherton got down to work in her double shift at the English Institute of Sport's indoor arena in Sheffield yesterday, it was inevitable that Carolina would be on her mind. For Great Britain's other individual track-and-field medal winner from the Athens Olympics (other than the absent Dame Kelly Holmes, that is), the Norwich Union European Indoor Trials and AAA Championships happens to be preparation for the considerable challenge of locking competitive horns with Carolina Kluft, the Swedish golden girl of world athletics, in Birmingham next Friday night and in Madrid on 4 March. While Dame Kelly is undecided whether to go for gold at the European Indoor Championships in the Spanish capital next month, Sotherton, winner of the heptathlon bronze medal in Athens last summer, is aiming to challenge for a medal in the five-event heptathlon. In doing so, the 28-year-old Birchfield Harrier is getting ready to put herself on the line against Kluft, who has swept all before her in the multi-events world since taking European indoor bronze as an emerging teenager in Vienna three years ago. http://sport.independent.co.uk/general/story.jsp?story=610629
