Athletics: Caines takes on unfinished family business

Blondel Thompson is still waiting to find out why she didn't make the Commonwealth Games team. She has been waiting for more than 28 years now.

Back in October 1973, as a 19-year-old member of Birchfield Harriers, Thompson won the 100m hurdles trials at Crystal Palace for the English women's Commonwealth Games team to compete in Christchurch the following January. When the squad was announced, however, her name was absent. The three hurdlers on the list were Judy Vernon, Ann Wilson and Janet Honour.

"I wasn't given an explanation," Thompson said, casting her mind back to her competitive days. "I just wasn't picked. I won the trials and we were led to believe if you won the trials you were picked, or in with a shout of being picked."

At least it has been different for Thompson's son. When Daniel Caines won the men's 400m final in the trials meeting in Manchester last month there was never any question that he might be omitted from the England team – and that his mother might not have an interest in the Commonwealth Games of 2002. A Birchfield Harrier, like his mother, the 23-year-old has been a man in form this summer. At the European Cup in Annecy three weeks ago he improved his personal best to 45.14sec in surging to victory ahead of Ingo Schultz, the world championship silver medallist. In Sheffield the following Sunday he scored another big win, beating Arvard Moncur, the world champion and leading Commonwealth Games contender from the Bahamas.

This weekend Caines can afford to rest easy and avoid aggravating a niggling knee problem in the AAA Championships on home ground at the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham, secure in the knowledge that he will be granted the discretionary British team place in his event for the European Championships in Munich next month. His mother competed in the 1974 European Championships in Rome. She reached the semi-finals. It proved to be her first and last appearance in a major championship.

She became a Seventh Day Adventist and desisted from competing on Saturdays. She did break the British record for the 100m hurdles at an international match in Warsaw in June 1974, jointly clocking 13.0sec with Vernon, who had won the Commonwealth title in Christchurch six months previously. It is fair to say, though, that Thompson did not fulfil her potential, not least because of the competitive restriction she accepted as part of her religious faith.

"Well, yes, it affected my running a great deal," she said. "You forget... there weren't as many races on Sundays back then. Everything was geared to Saturdays. A lot of things came into play. I missed the Olympics in 1976. And then Daniel came along in 1979. I got along with living." Twenty three years later, Thompson is getting along with her life, relishing her son fulfilling his rich potential. An Olympic semi-finalist in 2000 and a winner at the world indoor championships in Lisbon last year, Caines has shown considerable mettle in fighting back from a stress fracture that kept him out of the world championships last summer. His mother is justly proud.

"Yeah, I'm very happy for him," she said. "He seems to have got himself balanced. He's got a good mind. He's blessed with great talent and hopefully he'll develop to his full potential." Caines is maximising his ability with the help of his father, Joe, a former junior international 400m runner, who guides him as coach, and of his mother, who assumed the role of his manager after races promised by an agent failed to materialise. "It wasn't something I went looking for," she said. "It was just something that happened." A barrister by profession, Caines' mother and manager is happy to remain in the background. "It's Daniel who should be in the spotlight," she said. Which he will be, of course, when the Games begin.