The back injury which hampered Nathan Douglas’s qualification for the triple jump ultimately proved his undoing in Saturday’s final at Glasgow 2014, writes STUART WEIR.

The Oxford City athlete, who finished 11th, said: “I’ve had the back problem for the last three to four weeks, but it hasn’t been too bad.

“Then in the qualifying with the first jump, I caught it a bit awkwardly and it just went.

“I tried another jump and it was worse.

“On Friday night I was getting physio to 1.30 or 2.00 in the morning.

“Then I tried to get some sleep. Before the final it was physio all day. I was pain-killered up, and came here to try and do it.”

With a foul with his first jump and 14.56m with his second, Douglas passed on his third to finish well down the field.

“I came into the final knowing I was going to have to gamble in the first round,” he said.

“I thought I only had one jump in me, so the plan was to try to lay it down in the first round.

“It was a foul and wasn’t that far anyhow. I looked at my coach and said ‘I might be able to squeeze one more’. “I tried, but my back is locked up so badly it just wasn’t possible and I had to call it a day and leave it there.”

South African Khotso Mokoena, better known as a long jumper, took the gold medal with 17.20m.

England’s Phillips Idowu was fifth with 16.45m and Nathan Fox sixth with 16.26m.

Douglas, though, remains optimistic for the future.

He added: “I thought to myself I would love to come here and win a Commonwealth Gold medal, but looking at the bigger picture over the next few years there are some big competitions coming up, so I need to look forward and be smart with my decisions.”