TOM Lancashire admitted he was “gutted” to finish fifth in the final of the European Indoor Athletics Championships on Saturday.

The Bolton runner had targeted the event in Serbia to win the first senior medal of his career.

He impressed hugely in winning the most difficult of the three heats on Friday in a race he took by the scruff of the neck and took the field apart with a brilliant piece of prolonged front-running.

Saturday’s final was a different kind of race with the 31-year-old Bromley Cross man finding himself in a pack of runners and eventually being outsprinted on the last lap.

He said: “I felt like I should have been strong enough to deal with that kind of race.

“But I had too many changes of position and I was a bit too focused on that at the start of the race.

“They ran a really quick last 800m and it’s not like I was beaten by slouches, but I’m just gutted.”