By David Owen in Doha

March 16 - UK Athletics head coach Charles van Commenee (pictured) has flown home with mixed feelings about the performances of British athletes at the World Indoor Championships here.



The team attained its target of four medals, thanks to golds from Jessica Ennis in the pentathlon and Dwain Chambers in the 60 metres, a silver from Jenny Meadows in the 800m and a bronze from the men’s 4x400 metre relay squad.

But while van Commenee said the medals were won with “excellent performances”, other athletes had not risen to the occasion as he had hoped.

"So that’s why I’m going home with mixed feelings," van Commenee said.

"I’m not happy with that.

"Andrew Osagie [who missed out on the final of the 800 metres by just four-hundredths of a second] used the opportunity for sure.

"Then there were three or four athletes who did approximately what you could expect.

"And the rest - disappointing."

Van Commenee said he had not yet found a common factor behind the performances.

"I have to go into that group in the middle that might have done it but have not delivered and see why these things happened and what to do in the next few months," he said.

With some of the athletes here simply not competitive, van Commenee also indicated that selection criteria for indoor championships were likely to get tougher.

"You have to ask the question whether it was right for them to be here and the answer is actually ‘No’", he said.

"This means, if this is the conclusion, that we have to look into selection criteria.

"Now I don’t have to do that for [the 2010 European Championships in] Barcelona because they are tough enough.

"We used the same selection criteria as for the World Championships.

"We have done that in the light of preparations for the [2012] Olympic Games in London.

"I think given the results here, in the next two years we need to take the same approach for indoor events.

"So that’s a conclusion."

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