SHARON Tonks saw her Commonwealth Games hopes end in tatters as she failed to secure the time needed to land a place in Melbourne.

The Redditch & Bromsgrove AC race walker needed a top three place and a time of 65 minutes at the weekend's 20km trial at Earls Colne, in Essex.

But high temperatures and an incident early on the in the race forced Tonks to shelve her Commonwealth hopes.

The 50km race started at 10.30am when the temperature was above 30C. By 12.30pm, and the start of the combined 20km races, the temperature had intensified and a strong swirling wind had also developed.

The women's field contained athletes from Finland, Australia and the Republic of Ireland and Tonks' plan was for a steady opening 5km, increasing the speed through each subsequent 5km.

To her surprise she led the field of GB hopefuls through the first 5km only to be involved in an incident with a lorry that forced her to stop.

During the following kilometre she concluded nobody would increase speed under the prevailing conditions and decided to stop at 7km along with three other athletes.

The rest of the event was pure survival except for junior Katie Stone who had a brilliant race and went on to win the trials but, unfortunately, two minutes outside the qualifying time. No qualifying times were recorded in any of the three races.