'I ran with my heart' – Sharlene Mawdsley back on track

It's doubtful any athlete at the recent World Indoor Championships went through the full range of emotions quite like Sharlene Mawdsley.

If she thought the 400m heat was dramatic – a photo finish saw her post the same time as two other athletes with all three advancing to the semi-final – it was a drop in the ocean for what was to follow.

The Newport athlete was ranked sixth coming into the semi-final, but produced a gutsy display to edge past Austria’s Susanne Gogl-Walli and take the third automatic qualifying spot in what was a bustling and physical race.

That ecstasy soon turned to agony when she was disqualified for obstruction, the race officials of the opinion that Mawdsley had cut into the Austrian’s lane too early.

"I did not know the rule that you have to be so far ahead before you cut in," she tells RTÉ Sport. "I just thought you just cut in when you cut in when you are ahead, but that is not the case.

"A lot of people wouldn’t have been disqualified for what I did.

"I remember we were doing an interview and watching the men’s 800m and I was like this is crazy, I didn’t do anything like that. In the end, the decision was made, and I just had to get on with it. At this level, you can’t dwell on it for too long, because the sport moves on.

"Initially the appeal went in I was thinking it's grand, we’re going to counter appeal it. I knew I deserved to be there. Then I found out I really was disqualified and it was different emotions then, I was really upset."

The 25-year-old says she got little sleep that night, playing out the race over and over. Should she have waited for longer like she did in her heat?

There was little time to lick the wounds with the 4x400m relay semi-final, and potentially a final, at stake on the