Andy Turner has been Britain's top sprint hurdler since 1993 and with an impressive bronze medal performance at the European Championships in 2006 Andy hopes to build on this and go even further.
SPORT BIO
Andy was born and brought up in Nottingham. He comes from a sporty family, where his father and brother were both County standard Athletes. At school Andy was scouted by Nott’s County Football Club, where he played for two years. He subsequently switched from Football to Athletics and after a highly successful career as a teenager; Andy made the transition into a world class senior sprint hurdler in 2003.
In 1997, Andy won both the AAA and English Schools’ under17 titles over 100m hurdles. It was five years later, in 2002, that he made his Great Britain debut in the under 23 team in a match against Germany, where he broke 14 seconds for the first time with a time of 13.97seconds for the 110m hurdles.
He made his senior debut at the European cup in Florence in the summer of 2003 and finished a fine fifth. He clocked 13.71seconds, just 0.05seconds outside of his fastest ever time. The following year, after a successful indoor season, Andy was placed third in the European Cup and improved his personal best to 13.47seconds. Much to his frustration he sustained an injury which ruined his preparations for the Athens Olympics. He travelled to Athens to give it his best shot, but was knocked out in the heats, which was his first race back since the injury.
2005 saw Andy as a runner-up in the AAAs, both indoors and out and he narrowly missed selection for the World Championships in Helsinki. However, since then he has progressed well, with an outstanding start to 2006, running personal bests in three events during the winter. After taking his first senior AAAs title over 60m hurdles in Sheffield in February impressed everyone to also make the 200m final.
Andy represented England at the Commonwealth Games in 2006. Having qualified for his first Commonwealth Games, Andy achieved his goal of making the podium, winning the bronze medal for England in an exciting and close final. Andy went on to impress commentators and England team mates when he was, at short notice, drafted in to run the first leg in the 4X100m relay. After running a good leg it was unfortunate that the team was disqualified for a later mistake by his team mates.
Andy Turner continued with his impressive performances by claiming a bronze medal in the 110m hurdles at the European Championships in August 2006. Turner was out of the medal positions for most of the race, but pipped the Russian after storming out of the final hurdle.
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