A TRIP to Australia brought highs and lows for veteran athlete David Elderfield as he returned with five championship medals but just missed a world record.

One of his two golds at the world masters (formerly veterans), championships in Brisbane came in the individual 400 metres where his finishing time was at first given as a new world record.

But that hand-held stopwatch time was subsequently lowered to an electronic time of 50.23sec - three hundredths of a second outside the existing record for the 45 to 49 age group, held by Fred Sowerby of the USA.

"I wasn't happy," said Elderfield, back at his Tadley home. "It should have been the best day of my sporting life - after all I'd just won a gold medal - but I was gutted to have missed a world record by three hundredths of a second.

"It's been haunting me ever since."

By the time the 400 metres came around in the 11-day championships, the 45-year-old AWE electronics engineer was suffering from a sore throat and a cold.

Nevertheless, Elderfield's time as he won by 15 metres was a new British and European record. He now holds British and European best times over 60m and 400m indoors and 400m outdoors.

An additional factor among his what-might-have-been thoughts was a soft track that slowed runners' times.

The ANZ stadium track has just been relaid. Elderfield likened it to a trampoline.

His medal haul started with a silver in the 100m, where he clocked 11.55sec. The soft track and a head wind led to athletes clocking worse than expected times.

A bronze medal followed in the 200m where Elderfield was timed at 23.5sec.

His second gold came as a member of the British 4x400m relay team. He ran a splendid 49.7sec anchor leg in a winning time of 3mins 30sec.

The haul was completed with a silver as a member of the British 4x100m relay team.

The immediate reward for his individual gold medal success was to be subjected to a random dope test afterwards. He passed.