THE personal heartbreak of suffering a miscarriage has spurred a police officer to go one better than Olympic athletes.

PC Lisa Rooney, 35, had a miscarriage last December and lost the baby girl she was carrying.

In memory of the daughter she never knew, she helped organise a charity athletics event in Chester-le-Street that saw two teams of police officers complete a decathlon in just a day - one better than Olympic athletes who take two days to complete the ten- discipline event.

Officers from Durham and Chester-le-Street completed the challenge at the Riverside sports complex yesterday.

Between them they hoped to raise about £1,000 for Tommy's Campaign, a charity dedicated to funding research on the causes of miscarriages, still and premature births.

The competing officers, seven female and 13 male, were split into two teams.

When PC Rooney lost her baby, neither she nor police officer husband, Steve, knew Tommy's Campaign existed. That was until she was handed a leaflet one day when she took her three-year-old daughter, Beth, to the swimming baths.

She said: "We did the decathlon partly to raise funds, but also raise the profile of the charity. It is based in London and not very well-known in the North-East, but it carries out vital research into the causes of miscarriages and stillbirths.

"On a personal note, I just want to do anything I can to prevent other people having to go through what we went through."

The ten disciplines saw them run the 100 metres, 100m hurdles, 400m and 1,500m, while in the field they did the javelin, discus, shot putt, high jump, long jump and the triple jump, instead of the pole vault.