IWAN THOMAS will seek one final opinion to determine whether he can run this summer.

Southampton's European and Common-wealth 400 metres champion is looking to Swindon's Graham Holloway, one of the country's leading orthopaedic surgeons, for a definitive answer on whether his injured left ankle will carry him through to August's World Championships in Seville, Spain. If not the season could be over before it has begun for the 25-year-old golden boy of British athletics.

Results of Thomas's latest scan were inconclusive. Although a lesion one centimetre long and seven millimetres wide is still clearly visible at the lower end of the tibia, there is no sign of any flaking bone as was previously suspected. It is, however, almost impossible to tell if the injury is healing.

With time ticking away on the countdown to the World Championships Trials at Birmingham at the end of July, Thomas is now desperate to know if he can start training or not.

His Southampton-based coach Mike Smith, who will accompany Thomas to Swindon on Thursday, said: "This uncertainty can't go on. Iwan needs to be told some time in the next fortnight if he has the go-ahead to train.

"If he can there is no reason why he should not make the Trials and go on to reach the World Championships, but if there is no firm decision about the injury over the next two weeks then we have seriously got to say that he's not going to do it this season."

Should Thomas fail to make it on to the track this summer, it would a crushing blow to British athletics.

The 25-year-old Welshman was the shining star of the men's team last summer. He struck one-lap gold in the AAAs, European Championships, World Cup and Commonwealth Games, was voted athlete and sportsman-of-the-year by the sports writers and finished third in the BBC's Sports Personality poll.

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