ONE of Warrington’s Olympic hopefuls is confident she can race her way into contention for the 2016 Olympic Games after overcoming a knee injury.

Despite not racing the event for nearly two years, Great Sankey’s Abi Fitzpatrick has begun her charge for a place on Great Britain’s 400m hurdles team at next summer’s Games in Rio, Brazil.

Following her recovery from a knee operation on an injury sustained last year during warm weather training, the 22-year-old is focused on meeting the qualifying standard for Rio.

That requires the athlete to knock one second off her personal best of 57.5 seconds.

“My PB is only one second off and that was run two years ago,” said Fitzpatrick. “Training is going in the right direction.

“I’m in full training and just need to put a race together now. I’ve not raced over hurdles in 22 months, so it will take a few races to set that technique straight.

“I’m looking forward to getting back into it and have got lots of races around Europe coming up – you get the good weather abroad.

“I’ve got all of this year and most of next year so it’s looking hopeful.”

Graduating with a degree in Sports Massage kept Fitzpatrick occupied during the injury, but she has been forced to work hard since.

"I train five times a week, but when I was injured I lost a lot of endurance so it’s been lots of hard slogging work and speed endurance," she added.

"Now I’m starting to race it’s more about my speed and technique."

And the former English Schools’ champion knows she faces some tough domestic competition.

“I have until July to make the qualifying standard of 56.4secs and then three weeks before the Games the selection panel will pick the team,” she added.

“You may have the standard but so could four other girls and they will only take three. So really it’s who is the most consistent, who is beating each other in head-to-heads – it could be between about six of us.”