 |
| Great Britain's Mo Farah is set to defend his continental 5000m title at the European Athletics Championships in Helsinki. |
Great Britain's 2011 European Athlete of the Year Mo Farah is set to defend his continental 5000m title and he will be bidding to become the first man to take back-to-back titles over the distance after being given special dispensation to compete at the European Athletics Championships in Helsinki as well as at the Britain's Olympic trials, where he will run over 1500m.
''Running the 1500m at the Aviva 2012 Trials is a great chance for me to work on my speed and tactics in a championship format, over two days,' said Farah.
The 2012 European Athletics Championship begins on 27 June, just three days after the British Olympic trials end in Birmingham.
The action is the Finnish capital ends of 1 July.
Farah won both the 5000m and 10,000m at the last European Athletics Championships two years ago in Barcelona and then also got a gold medal over the shorter distance at last summer's World Championships.
As the only European to have run under 13 minutes this year, with Germany's Arne Gabius next on the 2012 rankings with 13:13.43, Farah is the clear favourite win the 5000m again.
A provisional Great Britain squad of 109 athletes has been named for the European Athletics Championships and the full list can be seen on the UK Athletics website here.
The final entries for the 21st European Athletics Championships are also now available online here.
A total of 1,342 athletes, including 738 male and 604 female athletes from all 50 European Athletics Member Federation have been entered.