FROM promising junior to over-achieving senior – Holly Bleasdale’s recent rise might have been meteoric in the extreme but Olympic silver medallist Colin Jackson insists she’s only just getting going.

Such has been Bleasdale’s rush to the top of the GB pole vault rankings, 110m hurdler Jackson admits he didn’t know who the Blackburn Harrier was last year.

He certainly does now after a vintage last 2011 campaign, which has seen the 19-year-old firmly establish herself as the GB No. 1 by recording a new personal best – and British record – of 4.70m at the Bauhaus Junior Gala on July 2.

That new high eclipsed Bleasdale’s best leap of last year by 35cm, easily ousting old British record holder Kate Dennison (4.60m) and firmly announcing the Lancashire ace among the world’s best.

And while Jackson admits he’d have struggled to pick her out in a line-up last year, fast forward 12 months and he believes the Chorley-born teenager is a realistic medal contender at next month’s World Championships.

“If you’d asked me about Holly a year ago I’d have been asking you who she was and what event she competed in, that is how quick she has come onto the scene,” said Jackson – who will be the star guest tomorrow as Eurostar celebrate the one-year-to-countdown to 2012 by giving 20 competition winners a close-up look at the London 2012 venues.

“But I have seen her compete and just been really impressed with how she has got on this year and the heights she has been jumping are just amazing.

“The way she has jumped this season means that she can be looking at the World Championships now and thinking, ‘I can challenge the best in the world’.

“If she can reproduce her 4.70m jump then she is going to really be right up there challenging for a medal.”

Bleasdale proved her early-July heroics were no flash in the pan last week by winning European Under-23 Championship gold in Ostrava, despite giving away three years to most of the competitors.

Sitting fifth in the overall senior world rankings, Bleasdale will be firmly in the hunt for medals in South Korea but Jackson insists he is more excited by Bleasdale’s potential in the years to come – and especially at London next year.

“The excitement factor for Holly now is amazing because with the way she has improved this year she is definitely going to be thinking, I can jump 5m,” added Jackson.

n Eurostar is opening the way to London 2012. As the Official International Rail Services Provider to London 2012, Eurostar will bring hundreds of thousands of sports fans from the continent to London to soak up the atmosphere. Find out more at eurostar.com/london2012.