DANNY Talbot is welcoming the chance to take on new British 200m sprinter Zharnel Hughes at the Sainsbury’s British Championships this weekend, writes KEVIN FAHEY.

The Trowbridge Tornado is the reigning British champion but in the build-up to the event, which incorporates the trials for the World Championships, all the talk has been about Hughes.

The 19-year-old, who has been dubbed the next Usain Bolt, has just been cleared to represent Great Britain at the Olympics in Rio next year so ending fears that he may have opted to represent Jamaica, where he moved to train alongside Bolt and Yohan Blake under coach Glen Mills.

The decision was slammed by Britain’s World Indoor 60m champion Richard Kilty, who said he was expressing the thoughts of the majority of British sprinters when he said Hughes wouldn’t be welcome.

But Talbot has rejected that claim and said he is only too happy to welcome Hughes as a rival and potential fellow colleague.

“It is Zharnel’s only chance of running in the Olympics to represent Britain and he is embracing it,” said Talbot.

“I think it would be horrible for someone to be denied the chance to compete in an Olympic Games because his country is not recognised.

“I don’t think he is here to make a quick bit of money and he wants to be part of the team.”

Hughes is from Anguilla, a small island of just 13,000 people in the Eastern Caribbean, which is a British overseas territory. Because of that Hughes has been a full British passport holder since birth and is eligible to compete under the Union Flag with immediate effect.

Anguilla is not recognised by the International Olympic Committee so competing for Britain is Hughes only route to the Olympics.

UK Athletics chiefs have been courting him since he broke Blake’s Jamaican High Schools Championship 100m record in 2014 with a time of 10.12sec. This summer he has run a PB of 20.15secs and recently finished just three-hundredths of a second behind Bolt in the 200m at the Diamond League meeting in New York.

That PB will make him the fastest athlete in the field in Birmingham this weekend and while the furore over his switch may detract from his best Talbot thinks his arrival can only help British sprinting.

“It has always been my ambition to win a medal at the World Championships and Olympics and do that you have to beat the best sprinters in the world,” added Talbot.

“I think Zharnel will help raise the standards of British sprinting because everyone will have to raise their game. It is going to bring greater depth to our sprinting.

“I can understand why some people are annoyed but he has had a British passport since birth and I have no problem with him coming over here at all.

“It just increases the quality of the field and I’ll be looking to beat him like anyone else as a stepping stone to the World Championships.

“I feel I am in PB shape myself and I am really looking forward to the weekend.”

MORE ON TALBOT'S BUILD-UP TO THE DEFENCE OF HIS 200M TITLE IN BIRMINGHAM THIS WEEKEND IN THIS WEEK'S WILTSHIRE TIMES