Enfield athlete William Grimsey was pleased to reap the rewards of years of hard work after qualifying for this week’s World University Games.

The 22-year-old, who has just finished his history degree at Loughborough University, jumped a personal best of 2.18m at 2019 BUCS Outdoors to claim the high jump title. and improved that by a further two centimetres at the Loughborough International.

Grimsey, who is coached by Fuzz Caan, then improved that personal best by a further two centimetres at the Loughborough International to qualify for the Games in Italy.

Relief was the biggest emotion for Grimsey, who recognised that it had taken him longer to adjust to university life than he predicted.

“It was long overdue for me,” Grimsey said.

“Last year was my first PB in three years, I improved it from 2.12m to 2.14m and I think I struggled a lot with moving to university, getting ill, getting injured and moving to a new coach.

“So it’s taken three or four years to adjust to everything for the rewards to start coming in, that was a good way to open the season and now I just hope that I can actually push on from that.

“The biggest change was when I started implementing weights, it’s taken my body a little bit of time to adjust to

“My diet as well is something I’ve looked to improve especially this season I think it’s been quite a big factor.”

The Universiade is widely recognised as the second largest multi-sport Games in the world after the Olympics, with over 10,000 participants from more than 150 countries.

More than 80 athletes across nine sports will take their place in Team Great Britain in Naples, representing institutions from all across the UK.

Grimsey will be pulling on a Great Britain senior vest for the first time and has hopes of medalling both at the World University Games and the British Championships later in the year.

“I want to qualify for the final, first off the bat and then getting into the final and see what I can do,” Grimsey added.

“Coming home with a medal would be nice but you’ve just got to take it a step at a time.

“My goals beyond Napoli would be ideally to see if I can get into a Diamond League, improve my PB, turn up to British Champs try and medal.

“The highest I’ve placed at British champs before is 8th and that was last year and I had to pull out injured so if I can just try and improve on that and get a medal that would be great.”

PLEASE LEAVE IN FINAL PAR – British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) is the national governing body for Higher Education (HE) sport in the UK, organising leagues and competitions for more than 150 institutions across 52 different sports. For more information visit bucs.org.uk