With medal hopes for next month’s World Championships in Osaka thin on the ground, the last thing Dave Collins, the UK performance director, needed yesterday was one of his few world-class performers falling by the wayside.

Phillips Idowu showed that he was capable of mixing in world class by winning the triple jump at the season’s opening Golden League meeting in Oslo. Back among the domestic also-rans at the Norwich Union World Trials and UK National Championships in Manchester, he lasted only one jump.

An unimpressive 15.84 metres was enough to aggravate the back injury that prevented him chasing the Golden League $1 million jackpot and put his participation in Japan in doubt. Many people have told Idowu that his problems are in his head, but he feels that this one is definitely physical. “If I’m in pain, I don’t think I’ll go [to Osaka],” Idowu said. “I’m not going to jump in pain because I’m not going to get what I want out there. I’ve not done as many competitions as I would have liked to.

“It’s been fine over the last two or three weeks because I decided to miss quite a lot of competition. I thought it had responded well to rehab. Right now I’m not thinking about it [Osaka]. I want to keep doing the rehab work and hopefully get it a lot stronger.”

Anything less than a medal in the 4 x 100 metres relay for Britain will be seen as a failure, although individual success in the sprints is a long shot. Marlon Devonish was able to give Craig Pickering, his 20-year-old rival, a sideways glance on the way to winning the 100 metres title on Saturday, and completed the sprint double for the second successive year by winning the 200 metres in 20.79sec.

But Devonish, 31, had to come from behind yesterday after finding himself three metres down as he turned into the straight. It took until the closing strides to overhaul Alex Nelson, the 19-year-old European junior champion, who finished 0.05sec behind.

“I did not start well – I can’t keep giving these young guys leads,” Devonish said. “It was too close. I’m going to prioritise the 100 [in Osaka] because I have finished in the top three in every race. I’m not sure about the 200 – we’ve got to focus on the relay.”

Third in Saturday’s race was Mark Lewis-Francis, who hopes to make the team for Osaka and not just as a relay runner. “I tore my quad two weeks ago,” Lewis-Francis said. “Week one it was ‘can I make the trials?’, week two I was lifting weights. I’ve never been so happy to finish third.”

Andy Baddeley has overcome plenty of hardship to compete at the highest level. He has a large lump on his chest that covers a computer chip that was inserted to monitor an irregular heartbeat. Baddeley, 25, marked himself out as a top-class 1,500 metres runner when he ran 3min 34.37sec in the wet at the Sheffield grand prix meeting a fortnight ago. Yesterday he controlled matters from the start by winning the national title in 3:43.25.

“In many ways the conditions were tougher here than the rain in Sheffield because of the wind, so it was difficult to judge the race,” he said. “I know there’s more pressure on me now than there was, but I’m also growing in confidence, and no one puts more pressure on me than myself.”

Natasha Danvers-Smith won the 400 metres hurdles, her fourth national title, and a race has been added to the timetable at Friday’s Grand Prix at Crystal Palace to get her an extra competitive race.

Friday’s meeting may be the last chance for Tim Benjamin to prove his fitness for Osaka. Benjamin was the sole British male finalist in a track race at the previous world championships, in Helsinki in 2005. In his absence yesterday, the 400 metres was won by a local lad, Andrew Steele, who runs for Trafford.

Steele, 22, is from a showbusiness family. His father, Chris, is a television doctor who appears on GMTV, and his brother, Matthew, plays keyboard for the Brand New Heavies.