Lorraine Ugen: Watching London 2012 was so hard, but I'm ready for Rio

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A solitary centimetre separated Lorraine Ugen from a place in the British team at the last Olympics in her home town.

Knowing that even the slightest additional gust of wind behind her on the long-jump runway or the slightest tweak in her technique would have booked her place in the team for London 2012 was hard to bear.

But four years on the 24-year-old has put the agony, which for so long was her main motivating factor, behind her.

“Watching 2012 was so hard as I was just so close,” she recalls ahead of her Games debut in the early hours of Wednesday morning. “If it had been 10 centimetres I’d missed out by I think that would have been easier to bear but just a centimetre… that was tough.

“I really felt I was good enough to make the team back then so it was pretty devastating really. But at that point I decided I would never put myself in a position that I would miss out on selection again and that I had to train even harder.”

Having already booked her place early in 2016 with her strong indoor form, there was a brief danger that history might repeat itself and that Ugen would be forced to watch another Olympics on television.

A hamstring injury in May curtailed her outdoor season, Ugen just jumping in qualifying at the European Championships where she achieved a best of 6.33 metres, some way short of the 6.93 she cleared to win bronze at the World Indoor Championships in Portland in May.

But in a discipline where rhythm is everything, Ugen, who was born in Elephant and Castle but moved to Thamesmead when she was nine, has faced a race against time to get back to that early-season form.

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“I had a small tear in my hamstring but it’s healed well,” she says. “I’d rather have done some competitions in June and July but honestly the thing with my rhythm is fine with me. I’ll be ready to go.

“A lot of time in my first competition of the season I’ve jumped pretty well so I’m feeling good going to Rio.”

At her best, Ugen believes she is a seven-metre jumper but it remains to be seen what sort of shape she will be in when qualifying gets under way.

Even with the injury, she insists her confidence is sky high from her indoor season which included the Portland medal as well as a £20,000 for winning her event in the new-for-2016 World Indoor Tour.

“I’d never got on the podium but always knew I was capable of it so to finally do that was great for my confidence,” she adds. “Now it’s a case of I know I’ve done it, I know I can do it again. I feel I can be on the podium again in Rio.”

Ugen will be watched by her parents in the stands while a crop of London friends will be cheering her on from home.

Despite it being her Olympic bow, she insists there are no butterflies nor additional pressure from having family close by watching.

Instead, she is just relishing the “dream come true” experience and remains undaunted of making it to a Games four years on from her Olympic devastation.

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“I’ve been to the Commonwealth Games so I’ve been telling myself it’s just like that but on a slightly bigger scale,” she says. “It’s that sort of vibe and atmosphere.

“I want the sound in the Olympic Stadium to be loud. I remember when I was jumping in Portland, Briane Theisen-Eaton, who is local to Portland, had just won heptathlon gold and the noise was incredible.

“When I was on the long-jump runway, I told myself those cheers were for me. I’m expecting noise on another scale in Rio.”

Ugen is itching simply to get back to competition, breathing a sigh of relief when the Olympics began after months of negative headlines.

In the build-up, she tweeted: “I wish my first Olympics wasn’t surrounded by so much scandal and negativity. We train our whole lives for it to be overshadowed by nonsense.”

That frustration is still there to a degree, Ugen frustrated “that so many extraordinary stories got lost in the build-up” as a result of the Russian scandal.

She is well aware attention will be on her event, with the sole Russian track and field athlete allowed to compete in Rio, Darya Klishina, among her rivals.

Of Klishina’s eligibility, she says simply: “You jump whoever you’re up against. I’ve not really got any objections. Whoever I’m up against, I’ll do my best.”

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