Isle of Man athlete Ollie Lockley proved once again last Friday evening that he is currently in the form of his life in this crucial Commonwealth Games year, by obliterating his 5km road personal best time in London.

Running in the elite men's race at the Friday Night Under the Lights event at Battersea Park, the 32-year-old from Colby finished fourth in an extremely close finish in a time of 13 minutes and 50.1 seconds, taking a huge chunk of 20 seconds off his best time for the distance on both road and track.

Having achieved a Commonwealth Games consideration standard for the 10,000 metres by a big margin in Valencia a few weeks ago, Lockley has now also achieved the mark for the 5,000 metres, with road times being allowed for the 2026 Games in Glasgow.

The Isle of Man standard is 13:50.55 and, although road times are rounded up to the next second, his chip time is shown on the official results as being 13:50.1, which is inside the standard. Another superb performance.

Also running at the same event in the men's C race was Millfield School student Cai Lewis of Northern AC who ran an excellent time of 15:18.5 to take more than 30 seconds off his previous best set last year.

DAVID GRIFFITHS

- This year’s Commonwealth Games is set to take place in Glasgow this summer between Thursday, July 23 and Sunday, August 2, featuring a scaled-down and low-cost programme of 10 sports taking place over four venues.

The 10 sports in question are: athletics, 3x3 basketball, bowls, boxing, cycling, gymnastics, judo, netball, swimming and weightlifting/para weightlifting.