Athletics starlet Luca Minale wants to keep moving forward in pursuit of his Olympic dream after finally breaking an injury cycle that threatened to stop him in his tracks.

Competing in both track-and-field and cross-country, 22-year-old Minale has had contend with repeated stints on the sidelines over the past few years.

But it seems the worst is finally behind the Londoner after a successful summer on the circuit culminated in a finals place at the European U23 Championships last July.

And the Northumbria University graduate revealed his hope the trend will continue as he ramps up his to further establish himself as a name to watch in British athletics.

“I was caught in an injury cycle that I’ve managed to break now but before that it was four years of getting myself injured, train really hard to get back from injury and then injure myself in the process.

“It’s been a big goal of the last academic year to break that injury cycle.

“This year, I was on a special PT programme from the University to build myself up and become more robust and handle the weight of training and with that the body’s been able to respond and hit some decent times.

“My sister [Anoshka] was in sport as well during my first major injury where I stress-fractured both my shins. That  took me out for a very long time and at the same time my sister became the fastest in the country in her sport [cycling].

“So all of a sudden in the household it was all about my sister and how well she was doing and it was just normal sibling rivalry, I was like ‘Nah this can’t be, I need to get back into where I was before’.”

Minale’s ultimate ambition is to represent his country at an Olympic Games, and he has already rubbed shoulders with some of the UK’s biggest household names, including Olympian gold medallist Keely Hodgkinson.  

“I represented GB in the European U23s on the same team as Keely, where I met her briefly, and to see someone my age go on to dominate the world is so inspiring," he said.

“There are so many athletes even younger than me from all over that are on the top of the world stage. Nils Larose from the Netherlands, Japan’s [Ryuji] Miura from steeplechase. You see that and think ‘why can’t that be me?”

Minale is one of 50 athletes across a multitude of sports supported by a partnership between SportsAid and Pitching In, a multimillion-pound grassroots sport programme established by Entain, owner of Ladbrokes and Coral.

He said: “SportsAid massively helped me out this year. When I made my world cross-country team, it was all self-funded to go to Oman and I thought because it was a University programme, my University would help me out but in the end I was left to fund £1400 pretty much on my own.  

“In the end I reached out to SportsAid to help raise those funds and in the end I managed to raise quite a bit. Without SportsAid, I don’t think I would’ve managed to go to Worlds that year.” 

Entain, owner of Ladbrokes and Coral, is proud to be championing the next generation of British sporting heroes by providing talented young athletes with financial support and personal development opportunities in partnership with SportsAid. Visit entaingroup.com to find out more.