Dobriskey won 1500m gold at the 2006 Commonwealth Games

Commonwealth 1500m champion Lisa Dobriskey has admitted she feels under a lot of pressure to succeed at the forthcoming European Championships.

The Ashford-born athlete knows she is expected to get a medal in Barcelona after winning silver at the World Championships in Berlin last year.

"I definitely do feel it a lot," she told BBC Radio Kent.

"But it's dealing with that and using it positively rather than letting it eat you up and destroy you."

The 27-year-old burst onto the world stage in 2006 when she won gold at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

"Things just change in this sport - as soon as you have a little bit of success it can turn everything around completely," said Dobriskey.

"It's often a little bit easier going into a championship when you're an outsider or maybe an unknown athlete because the pressure is on everyone else and you can only do well in that situation.

"So to go into a championships where people expect you to be in a final and expect you to be challenging for medals is very different to what it was when I was younger."

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