Colchester's Sarah Claxton is hoping to have put a back injury behind her as she bids for glory at the European Indoor Athletics Championships next month.

The 29-year-old Olympic finalist is set to run in the 60 metre hurdles at the Aviva Grand Prix at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham on Saturday when she will be looking to impress the selectors ahead of the European Championships in Turin in Italy.

Places for the British team are due to be announced early next week and Claxton has high hopes of seeing her name on the list after a strong start to the season that has lifted her to third in the European rankings.

That form has seen her run a season’s best time of 8.06 seconds at the Aviva International Match in Glasgow last month, just 0.1s off her own British record and she now feels a new national best time is within her grasp after overcoming a back problem.

“My back is fine now,” said Claxton, who ran in the final of the 100m hurdles at the Olympic Games in Beijing last August.

“It is much better now after I had a cortisone injection into it.

“Last year in May, I hit a hurdle in a race and I kept running so it had no time to recover and got worse.

“Then I was running last week in Belgium and I felt something.

“I thought it was my hamstring, but it was my back and I had two joints inflamed, but the injection has solved that and I have had time to rest.”