CHRIS Tomlinson is confident he will be on the plane to Athens this summer despite being left in limbo following the announcement of the preliminary athletics squad for this summer's Olympic Games.

The Stockton-based long jumper has been given one more week to convince the British selectors that he his worth his place in the travelling party after he failed to achieve the necessary qualifying standard in last weekend's Olympic trials in Manchester.

Tomlinson won the event with a jump of 7.84m -some 35cm short of the A-qualifying distance set by the International Association of Athletics Federations.

Tomlinson was just 2cm short of the qualifying distance when he jumped 8.17m in March, and actually surpassed it when he achieved a wind-assisted 8.28m while winning the European Cup last month.

He has successfully achieved the B-qualifying standard, meaning the selectors can pick him at their own discretion, but they have challenged him to prove his worth in the one remaining meeting before they meet for the final time on Sunday.

Tomlinson will now travel to Madrid for Saturday's international meet knowing that his Olympic hopes hang in the balance.

"If I'm honest then I wasn't really expecting to be in the first batch of selections," admitted the 22-year-old, who holds both the British indoor and outdoor long jump records. "I thought that the B-standards weren't going to be called up this time around.

"But I've done a couple of training sessions since the weekend and things have been going really well.

"I've made a few technical changes after watching videos from last weekend, but that's the sort of thing you do as a long jumper all the time. I'll fly out to Madrid on Friday and I'll compete there on Saturday. After that it's in the hands of the selectors."

Tomlinson's early season form would have seen him qualify for almost any other event, but the Teessider has suffered from the IAAF's stiff qualifying standard in the long jump.

The required distance of 8.19m would have been good enough to have claimed fourth place in last year's World Championships.

Tomlinson has twice jumped to 8.27m in the past, and would have passed the qualifying mark last weekend were it not for problems with his run-up. He repeatedly took off more than 30cm behind the board, but is confident he can rectify the problem before leaving for Spain later this week.

"I've had feedback from UK Athletics since the weekend, and their recordings showed that I actually jumped 8.16m from where I was taking off. Manchester isn't a fast track because it's really just a warm-up track, so that would have been quite an achievement given the conditions. It's just a case of ironing out one technical problem now. I know that, physically, I'm in good shape.

The North-East is assured of having at least one athlete at this summer's Games after Newcastle-born hammer thrower Shirley Webb was named in the Olympic squad.

The 22-year-old, who competes for Scotland despite being born on Tyneside, finished second in last weekend's Olympic trials.