OLYMPIAN Danny Talbot has to sit back and kick his heels while his counterparts hit the track during the indoor season

But coach Dan Cossins is hoping that a lengthy spell on the sidelines will lead to the Trowbridge Tornado coming back hungrier than ever when the action switches back outdoors later this year.

Talbot, 21, was part of Great Britain’s 4x100m relay quartet at London 2012 last summer and is currently being put through his paces by UK Athletics coaches at a training camp in South Africa.

And with the Rio 2016 cycle only just starting for the Trowbridge man, coach Cossins thinks that the time is right for an experiment.

“When you reach the top level, most of the top guys don’t take part in the indoor season – people like Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake, Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay don’t do it,” said Corsham-based Cossins, who trains Talbot at the University of Bath and the Team Breakthrough performance centre in Box.

“If you’re an athlete who does run indoors, you have to work towards a double peak but if you don’t do it, then you can just prepare to peak at the start of the outdoor season.

“It’s only the start of the cycle which ends in Rio, so it’s the perfect time to experiment.

“We’ve brought in a very fast training partner to Danny’s group to push him, a 60m runner from
Manchester called Andy Robertson, who will be running indoors this year – hopefully, by watching everyone else, it will make Danny really hungry by the time he’s back competing.

“If it doesn’t work, there’s plenty of time to change things back next year but it seems like the perfect plan at the moment.”

Talbot graduated from the University of Bath with a degree in sports performance last year and is now getting used to life as a full-time athlete, something Cossins believes is not always easy.

He said: “If you’re a distance runner then you’ll spend a lot of time doing long sessions but I don’t believe in doing too many sessions a week.

“We probably get through just 12 hours a week and the rest of the time, Danny’s just doing his work in the gym so it can be easy to get bored with all that time on your hands.

“You need to make sure that it doesn’t become a negative so that you can train the best you positively can.

“I’ve suggested that Danny does some voluntary work or tries to do some coaching in some schools to give himself something else to think about.”