FROM a fifth-place finish at the Carrara Stadium, it was all a bit of a comedown for Scottish high jumper Allan Smith even in victory at the low key British Universities Championships at Bedford a fortnight back. The hard work starts tomorrow, though, as part of the Scotland team for the Loughborough international event, the first staging post in a summer which could see the Paisley athlete compete for Great Britain at both the European Championships in Berlin in August and the inaugural World Cup in London in July.

“Obviously there is the focus and drive for months building up to it [the Commonwealth Games],” said Smith, whose larger-than-life room-mate out in Australia was hammer thrower Mark Dry. “It is all about ‘I just need to get it right for this day’. Then when I came back I knew I was going to do BUCS but there was no drive, it was duty calls and I need to go down.

“I was there to win, I wasn’t there to come anything other than first,” he added. “It was kind of hard to go down and get motivated to jump 2.03 to qualify in first place with what was supposed to be one jump and it took me two attempts because I was too close with my first one. But now that that is over the way I know that the season starts again in Loughborough.”

Jumping a season’s best of 2.27 out in the Gold Coast, the first part of the equation for European Championship qualification has already been secured. Now all he needs to do to ensure he has a busy summer is rubber stamp it with a top-two finish at the British Championships in late June. In one sense you could say the equation in front of him got slightly simpler due to this week’s retirement of Robbie Grabarz, who finished fourth at the Rio Olympics.

“I’ve already achieved the standard for that - I just need to come top two at British champs but I’m there to win it, I’m not there for second place because there is too much at stake for this year,” he added. “You’ve got the World Cup and that will guarantee Europeans as well so to get two GB vests in the summer I need to win, there is no other option than that.”

The World Cup, which will take place in the London Stadium in the middle of July, is an intriguing innovation on the calendar, but it could prove a very lucrative one. “It’s an incentive as well because if the team does well then everyone does well and comes home with well potentially 10 grand from the World Cup,” he said. “It will be nice to get out with a home crowd as well because it is always busy, the big events in the UK are always busy so to get out there and just get a bit of home support.”

“Everyone keeps complaining about there is not a lot of money in athletics but this event kind of came out of nowhere, I know it had probably been planned for a while but it’s good for athletics because it’s another chance for overseas countries because there is no worlds or Olympics this year, it is just Europeans. So it gives an opportunity for everyone to come out and it is a big incentive because if the money is thrown out like that it gets people who would normally pass it up if there was no money available they’ll come over and do it.”

All in all, Smith was happy about his Antipodean adventure, even if he couldn’t quite return with a medal. Going out in his kilt like his room-mate Dry, he got plenty of support out there.

“It was a strong field,” he said. “I’m pretty sure that 2.27 I don’t think that has ever not medalled. It was unfortunate not to medal because it was such a big height not to medal but I can’t complain with how I held myself in the final, I was very close to a second PB and I know that get over the 2.30 is there come the summer.”