Games place boosts Bennett after serious injury
· Yahoo Sports
Essex 110m hurdler Sam Bennett is in the form of his life as he looks forward to next month's Commonwealth Games.
The 25-year-old was among 63 athletes added to the Team England squad on Monday after recently running two personal bests.
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He clocked 13.45 at a meeting in the Netherlands, then lowered it to 13.41 to win the UK Championships title in Birmingham.
"It's nice to wear my Basildon vest, but when you put on an England vest, and have something else to represent, it's really special," he told BBC Essex Sport Extra.
"Going to what feels like a home championships in Scotland is going to be amazing, having people cheer for you whether they know your name or not."
Just being on the start line in Birmingham was an achievement in itself for Bennett, who suffered a serious knee injury at the end of last year.
"The last nine years have been plagued with injury... in the last training session before my indoor season started on December 21st, I tripped over a hurdle and landed on my knee, a random freak injury.
"I fall over hurdles all the time, but [this time] tore my PCL [posterior cruciate ligament] and pretty much every part of my knee - it was a 90% tear of that.
"It meant three months of no running, and being a runner that can't run is a very weird feeling. It kind of gives you an identity crisis, and you have to go out and figure what to do with yourself."
It is no wonder then that raw emotion got the better of Bennett as he crossed the line.
"I've always had a bit of a mental block around British champs; I lost there two years ago by 0.0,1 and they only took one person to the Olympics, so you can imagine how difficult a situation that was," he said.
"I knew I had to get out really fast; the guy I was racing [Tade Ojora] is an amazing starter, so I wanted to get out really quickly - I'm never normally winning as early as I was and after hurdle three I knew all I had to do was not fall over the hurdles, and it was mine for the win.
"I was screaming from five or six metres out because I knew I'd won the race and I was really overcome with emotion."
Sam Bennett is also a former European Under-18 champion [Getty Images]After a successful career in youth athletics, supervised by coach Steve Surety, Bennett headed for the United States, where he took a master's degree at Harvard and also studied at Texas Tech.
But the pair hooked up again when he returned to the UK, and their hard work during a relentless racing schedule has paid off with his Games place.
Bennett describes Surety as a "second father" and said: "He knows my body; he knows what works and doesn't work, and together we're learning that again after six years of being apart."
He now has a month to further hone his technique and conditioning and hopes it will all come together on the start line in Glasgow.
"I've done 13 races in six weeks - for most people, that's their idea of hell.
"I've just been racing myself into shape after being injured pretty much for the whole of the start of the year - I wish there was a secret to it, but you get one thing wrong in one race and try and get it right in the next one," he added.
"I've not got the perfect race yet, but it's coming soon."