LAWRENCE Clarke insists he is over last month’s false start in London and will not make the same mistake in the Olympic Stadium next week.

The 26-year-old, from Christmas Common, near Watlington, begins his 110-metre hurdles campaign in the heats during the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Clarke, who came fourth at London 2012, has been in Rio for a week and will arrive in the Olympic village tomorrow after spending the last seven days at Great Britain’s training base in Belo Horizonte.

The former Summer Fields, Summertown, pupil’s final competition before Rio was the Muller Anniversary Games at London’s Olympic Stadium 19 days ago.

Despite making the final, all did not go to plan as a false start led to disqualification.

But Clarke is defiant there will be no repeat next week.

“I was just a bit over eager,” he said.

“That certainly won’t be the case in the Olympic Stadium – I will be fully focused.”

Clarke, who trains in Paris, already had two qualification standard times of 13.47secs for Rio in the bag before the turn of the year.

That left him with the task of finishing in the top two at the British Championships in June to secure direct qualification, which he achieved.

Since arriving in Brazil, he has been acclimatising, including training in the evenings, with next week’s heats at 8.40pm local time.

He said; “Things are going very well – I feel like I have changed gear.

“These are not normal training sessions, they are Olympic training sessions, it is all real.”

Clarke added: “By the end of this week I will be in the right place.

“This is what I have been racing four years for.

“If you do everything you can you can step away from these games knowing you have done it.

“I have no idea how anyone else will do – I’m just going to try to run my best.

“You just never know. The hurdles is one of these events where things can go right or horribly wrong.”