East Londoner Phillips Idowu has crashed out of the men’s triple jump final after failing to qualify.

On the run up to the event it sounded as if Idowu had disappeared off the face of the earth. But on Sunday he finally arrived at the Olympic village claiming  that for the last few weeks he has been ‘in his home city of London, finalising his preparation, receiving treatment (for an injury) and was easily reachable by the “appropriate people”.

However his coach Aston Moore allegedly only received a brief text from Idowu before the Beijing Olympics silver medalist cut off contact.

This afternoon Idowu jumped 16.53 metres and failed to finish in the top 12.

Afterwards Idowu said:

‘I had been traveling from Birmingham to London to see my coach. After withdrawing from Crystal Palace I was back up in Birmingham and had a problem in my hip going down to my knee.

‘I started a couple of training sessions in Birmingham and had to pull up in a running session. I made the decision to come back down to London and with the work over that week was better to stay in the UK. Warming up and training I had to make sue someone was there to work with me.

‘I had some great sprint and technical sessions but a full approach is a different kettle of fish. The timing wasn’t there. The hop and step was there but I just couldn’t get my final phase.’

‘To be honest I have been lucky over the last four or five years and have competed at my best at the championships and being able to do that I’ve been able to come away with at least silver.

‘I’m not at my best and I was hoping I would still produce something but it wasn’t to be.’

…

I said several days ago that after all this drama Idowu better qualify for his own sake.  But sadly this has not happened and he will now have to answer some serious questions.