After breaking the British long jump record last weekend, Chris Tomlinson will be one of this country's leading medal hopes at August's World Championships.

But, as he prepares to compete in tomorrow's Norwich Union Grand Prix at Sheffield, the Teessider tells Chief Sports Writer Scott Wilson that he almost quit athletics last winter.

FOR most athletes, 'going back to work at the turn of the year' represents a desire to hit the ground running at the start of the outdoor season. For Teessider Chris Tomlinson, though, the phrase almost had a far more literal meaning.

Four months ago, with his career hanging in the balance following a succession of serious knee injuries, the 25-year-old was contemplating a life outside athletics.

With his sponsors having deserted him following two lean seasons, and with the British authorities hinting that his lottery funding was in danger of being cut, Tomlinson came close to accepting a permanent day job in Middlesbrough.

Almost a decade-and-a-half of long-jump training was in danger of counting for nothing, but with next month's World Championships in Osaka offering an opportunity to turn his life around, he was persuaded to commit to one more season in professional sport.

Last weekend, as he broke his own UK long jump record with a leap of 8.29m, Tomlinson's refusal to admit defeat was vindicated.

He will start tomorrow's Norwich Union Grand Prix at Sheffield as the overwhelming pre-event favourite, and travel to Osaka in two months' time as one of Britain's leading contenders for a World Championship medal, not bad for an athlete who was still considering retirement at the start of the summer.

"It's been a hard couple of years and there have been times when it looked like the writing might have been on the wall," said Tomlinson, who was a three-time English Schools champion before winning his first AAA title in 1999.

"At the age of 22, I was fifth in the Olympics and people were saying that I would be the next big thing in British athletics.

"A couple of bad seasons later, though, and I was sponsorless and more or less penniless. I hadn't been able to perform at my best because of injury, and the same people were suddenly saying I was finished.

"There was a stage at the start of the year when I was seriously considering the possibility that I would have to put my athletics on the back-burner and get a job.

"If I'd gone down that path, I think that would have been the end of it in terms of me as a long jumper.

"Fortunately, I was persuaded to stick at it, and things have gradually come back together since then.

"It's been a successful four or five months and I really feel that I'm back to a point where I can be a threat in a major championships."

Tellingly, though, it is only the force of Tomlinson's character that has carried him through. Despite the likes of double Olympic champion Kelly Holmes not reaching their peak until their early 30s, the attitude of the British authorities seemed to be that, at the age of 25, the Teessider's needs were subordinate to those of the latest batch of teenagers hoping to make their way in the sport.

A lack of genuine medal contenders ahead of next year's Olympic Games has led a succession of commentators to conclude that Britain's youth development system is failing to produce athletes of a high enough quality to compete at world level.

Tomlinson's experiences as a former world-class junior suggests otherwise though.

The nurturing of his talents to international level was not a problem - it was a failure to support and maintain his development when things got difficult that almost proved terminal to his career.

"I don't think I'm the only person who has felt that way," he explained.

"What you come to realise from having a career in athletics is that Britain seems to produce a lot of athletes who get a lot of success very young, but then seem to get down in the doldrums and never recover.

"There are a lot of reasons for that - injury, a temporary loss of form, a change in personal circumstances - but the common factor seems to be that they're pretty much left to get through things on their own.

"Some manage it. People like Kelly Holmes and Jonathan Edwards overcame their problems to end up as Olympic champions. But an awful lot more fall by the wayside.

"You just have to look through the record books to find loads of British athletes who have done well at World Junior Championships, broken into the top ten or so in the world and then gone on to do absolutely nothing.

"That's something that the sport has to improve on, because there's no point discovering talent if you're not prepared to support it through the bad times as well as the good."

Thankfully, for Tomlinson, last weekend's performance in Germany suggests that his own bad times could finally be behind him.

His fourth attempt at Bad Langensalza broke the British record he set five years earlier, and his final effort would have been some 20cm further had he not grazed the marker on the take-off board to register a no-jump.

Had his final effort been legal, Tomlinson would have soared to third in the current world rankings and, while Irving Saladino remains a warm favourite for August's World Championships, the Panamanian's leading British rival is confident of featuring in the medal shake-up.

"Last weekend's performance was fantastic because it proved that I'm ready to make a real step up," said Tomlinson. "I still need to do a little bit more work with my run-up but, once that's started, the sky really is the limit.

"Saladino's pretty much out there on his own at the minute - he's jumping 8.40s and 8.50s for fun and he's the undisputed world number one. But there are a number of guys battling behind him and I'm right in the thick of that again.

"At the start of the season, my main aim was to get to the World Championships and make the final. Now, though, I'm going to be going there knowing that I'm capable of winning a medal."

At the start of the season, one medal looked likely to be a decent return for a British squad that has been stripped of many of its star names.

But with the likes of Craig Pickering, Jessica Ennis and Goldie Sayers having surged up the world rankings this season, the outlook for British athletics is far brighter than was predicted last winter.

"People have to remember that a lot of great British athletes have retired at the same time," explained Tomlinson. "Kelly Holmes, Colin Jackson, Steve Backley - any country would suffer from losing people like that.

"It's obviously left a bit of a void, but athletes are emerging to start to fill it.

"You're not going to see the finished article at this summer's competition but you are going to see a number of athletes who will become mainstays of the British team for many years.

"I might be 25 now, but I hope I can still be a part of all of that."