Hatti Dean leads Great Britain & Northern Ireland’s hopes in the women’s 3,000m steeplechase at this weekend’s Spar European Team Championships in Stockholm, Sweden.

And the former Radley steeplechaser will go into the race on Saturday as one of the favourites.

The 29-year-old is currently second in the European rankings this season with a season’s best time of 9mins 37.95secs – which she achieved in the Diamond League meeting in Rome last month.

Only Russia’s Gulnara Galkina, the reigning Olympic champion, has run quicker this season, clocking 9.29.75.

So perhaps Dean would settle for second place behind Galkina, who was the first woman to run sub-nine minutes in the event when she set a world record of 8.58.81 in the Olympic Games final of 2008.

Being a team event, Dean believes the pressure is entirely different to what she experiences in other competitions.

“You don’t want to let people down,” she said. “It’s just about getting as many points as you can for the team. It’s such a nice event to be involved in.”

Dean flew out for Sweden this morning, and will run on Saturday at 3.44pm British time, with live coverage on BBC2.