British Athletics have accepted a European Athletics invite for Niamh Emerson to compete in the pentathlon at next week’s European Indoor Championships on home soil in Glasgow – the Amber Valley & Erewash athlete being only the second British athlete ever to win the IAAF World Junior Championship heptathlon title during a stellar 2018, which also included Commonwealth bronze, and has begun this year indoors in fine style with victory in the pentathlon at the Combined Events International in Cardiff with a personal best 4544 points.
That score placed Emerson fourth on the all-time British rankings and currently fourth on the 2019 world and European indoor rankings and has led to an official European Athletics invite to compete for Great Britain & Northern Ireland in Glasgow.
With Katarina Johnson-Thompson already announced, Emerson’s invite means there will be two British athletes in the pentathlon for the third time since the event was introduced onto the European Indoor Championships programme in 1992.
Emerson’s inclusion takes the number of athletes to have stepped up having competed at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Finland last year to four with Kristal Awuah (Herne Hill), Joe Brier (Swansea) and Alex Haydock-Wilson (Windsor Slough Eton & Hounslow) all major senior international debutants for the British team.