Inverness athlete Jamie Bowie is determined to prove himself as more than a team player in 2015.
The Scot was part of the Great Britain 4x400metres squad which almost won gold at the world indoor championships in Poland last year.
The 25-year-old Inverness Harrier was then dropped from UK Athletics funding programme but will have an early chance to impress the selectors at the Sainsbury’s International Match in Glasgow on January 24 after confirming his determination to break back into the one-lap elite.
While Bowie was a key member of the Great Britain quartet which came so close to snaring the world indoor title in Sopot last March, in the summer the Scot was dropped from the line-up in the wake of his failure to qualify for the individual 400m at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
But with the world championships in Beijing topping the bill for 2015, the Pitreavie-based runner believes his best is yet to come.
“It’s good to have that focus with it being three and a half years to the next Commonwealth Games, or six months until the world championships in China,” he said. “But it’s about managing that step up and being not just a relay runner, but also proving myself as an individual athlete.
“Last year was a crazy 12 months and there was a lot going on, maybe too much.
“It came perhaps two or three years too early in my career for me to be able to manage it, for me to be able to peak for a series of big events in one year.
“Coming off 2013, when I’d surprised myself, I then had the Commonwealth Games – a huge event that I’d been thinking about for seven years and that kept me in the sport.
“Things are now a bit more relaxed, although there is always pressure to earn selection for events.”
With a clutch of the UK’s leading athletes now training together at Loughborough in England, some have questioned Bowie’s decision to remain in Scotland rather than grab the chance to get pushed on a daily basis by his rivals.
But Bowie believes staying in Scotland gives him as good a chance as any of making his mark.
“We’ve got a strong training group,” he said. “A few athletes have retired, it always changes every year, but different people in my squad have different attributes because it’s not just about 400m. There is speed work, hours spent in weights room and then working on my endurance. Everyone has their strengths in areas I can push myself against.”