PROUD Geoff Barraclough says he will wear a placard around York declaring he is Richard Buck’s grandfather if the runner gets the nod for Great Britain’s 4x400 metres Olympic relay squad tomorrow.

The City of York Athletics Club athlete has been training hard at the Olympic village in Stratford and is one of eight one-lap specialists that could get the call to line up in front of 80,000 spectators in the stunning Olympic Stadium in the morning session.

Barraclough, Buck’s coach when he was growing up and still a mentor to young runners at Huntington Stadium, reckons there will be no one prouder than him if the former Pickering Lady Lumley’s School pupil is picked as one of the four charged with ensuring Great Britain qualify for Friday evening’s final.

“I would be overjoyed,” Barraclough said. “There will be no one more proud than me if he gets a run tomorrow. I will walk round York with a placard on saying ‘I’m his granddad’.”

Having lost his UK Lottery funding and forced to stack shelves in a Loughborough Tesco in order to fund his Olympic dream, Buck has recovered strongly from his set-backs, which included not featuring in Beijing four years ago because of illness and injury – despite making the squad.

And Barraclough believes his grandson is in great form ahead of tomorrow’s D-Day.

“He went to Beijing but was unwell and had an injury,” he added. “London, though, was the major one. I’ve got high hopes that he will run. He keeps sending me little messages with how he is doing in his training.

“I can’t see that he could be doing any better.

“It means everything to him. He wanted to make it and he did everything he could to get there. He has shown a great resolve and, if he hadn’t wanted to get there, he might have given up a year ago.”

Barraclough will not be present in the Olympic Stadium, having been unimpressed with the ticketing arrangements, but he is still revelling in the spirit of the Games and can see the knock-on effect the country’s ever-growing medal haul is having on the youngsters he trains.

He said: “I use it as a motivator. It’s great for the kids at the moment.

“Youngsters keep asking to join my group and I have got a really great set at the moment. People are asking me if I have a ticket but I didn’t apply with all the kerfuffle about it.

“I will be able to watch it on TV and see a far better picture of it.

“The atmosphere will be different and there will be a part of me that wishes I was there. But hopefully he can run and I will be overjoyed if he does.”