I hit the fourth hurdle and that knocked me off balance almost into the next lane. I then rotated on the foot and that is what caused the problem. There is no way I could have gone on."Gunnell missed last season with a serious heel injury in her other foot and her frequently painful rehabilitation included an operation. I'm obviously disappointed about losing the title in such circumstances But at least I went out and gave it a go.

I just want to be on my own for a while and get away from everything that has happened."I felt the foot during the warm-ups It was sore but I tried to ignore it. "I won't be making any decision about whether to carry on running at the moment," she said."All my emotions are mixed. She had struggled all season to make good her comeback after a year's absence with an injury to her right heel.But after breaking down earlier this month at the Lausanne grand prix with a similar injury in her left heel, the odds on her making up lost ground on her American rivals here lengthen still further.Yesterday Gunnell insisted she would not be rushed into making a decision about her future, though retirement cannot be ruled out. You learn from that day, from that mistake."Johnson, meanwhile, is mindful of his own significant error as he starts his challenge for the 200m title today - the poor start in Oslo earlier this month which allowed Frankie Fredericks to end his unbeaten sequence of 38 races. "I will not make that mistake again," he said in his quiet, Texan drawl. "I had to hold it back in the 400m to make sure I was right for the 200 In the 400 I can't do what comes naturally to me.

I can do now and I'll be ready."The sight of Sally Gunnell being carried off the track after the 400m hurdles semi-final, her face working to hold back tears, was a desperate one. "If I'd gone with Michael at 250 metres the same thing would have happened again, so I let him go. I said 'Right guys, you're not going to beat me over the last 100 metres'."Somebody told me on Sunday that I'd get silver because I had more experience than anyone else in the race but to use that experience, I had to use the mistakes I'd made in 1991. "I had to run my own race, and I was going for the silver medal."In the back of his mind, he carried the memory of the 1991 World Championships, when he had gone out too fast over the first 250 metres and allowed Antonio Pettigrew of the United States to come through for gold on the line.With the upright, golden-shoed figure of Johnson just ahead of him in the next lane, the temptation for Black to over-reach himself again was there - but he resisted it. In the final 20 metres he came under pressure from the two men on the inside lanes Davis Kamoga of Uganda and Alvin Harrison, who was left as the United States' No runner after the withdrawl through injury of Butch Reynolds.For a moment it seemed as if Black was going to lose everything, but he kept his form to the line to finish in 44.41sec, just 0.04sec off his own British record.Ahead of him, Johnson completed the first leg of his intended 200-400m double, managing to look unruffled despite finishing a second ahead of the Briton."I made a decision that there was only one way to beat Michael Johnson and that was if Michael Johnson made a mistake," Black said.

After four operations on his legs - the last of them just before Christmas - and a debilitating, year-long encounter with the Epstein-Barr virus in 1993 which caused him to wonder if he would ever run again, he has discovered the form of his life.In what was the biggest race of his life, he judged his effort perfectly. "I'm Olympic silver medallist,'' he said, as if trying on a new coat for size. "It's not bad, is it?" The accompanying grin was huge.Black, who turned 30 in March, has earned his reward. The most memorable day's athletics of the Games so far put Britain's leading performers through the emotional mill.