YORK athlete Richard Buck achieved his year’s first ambition when he made the British team for this week’s World Athletics Championships.

Now he’s determined to have a greater role than a watching brief.

Buck is ranked a relatively lowly 11th in the UK over 400 metres this season but is one of eight names selected for the 4x400m relay team in Daegu this weekend.

Olympic finalist Martyn Rooney is considered a lock for one of the four available places while one-lap hurdler Dai Greene should also feature.

That leaves the others fighting it out for two available places and City of York Athletics Club’s Buck, who ran a personal best of 45.99 seconds in Switzerland last month, admits it will be tough to earn selection.

“I am not going to be badgering people or anything though about getting picked. I have got my preparation I need to do to make sure I am in the best shape I can be going in,” said Buck – who is currently preparing for the World Championships in the heat, humidity and rain of Ulsan, South Korea, at a training camp funded by Aviva – supporters of British athletes since 1999.

“It’s just about sticking to the plan now and being professional about things so that if I am called on I’m ready to take the step and rise to the occasion.

“It’s getting harder and harder to make the team so the fact that I am in the team is a great achievement in itself, especially with it being one year out from London (next year’s Olympic Games). “It’s a good way to get the ball rolling for London and get the momentum going into 2012.”

It’s 20 years since Great Britain famously won the 4x400m world title in Tokyo with a quartet that included Olympic medallists Roger Black and Kriss Akabusi.

Those were golden days for one lap running in the UK but only one athlete, Rooney, will feature in the individual 400m in Korea next week.

But Buck – a two-time relay silver medallist at the European Indoor Championship – remains optimistic about the team’s medal chances, following their silver, albeit with a much stronger quartet, two years ago.

“The four that go out onto the track, whoever they are, are going to be strong medal contenders,” added the 24-year-old.

He added: “To be in the relay team that wins a medal at the World Championships would represent a successful week and that is where I want to be.”

Despite his ranking outside the British top ten, Buck believes recent changes to his training programme will start to pay dividends in Olympic year – with 45.25 seconds, a big improvement on his personal best, the London 2012 qualifying standard.

“I moved coaches two years ago and then again this winter and I knew where I went this year I was going to have to stay for at least two years because of London and making sure that I had at least two years on the programme to make it effective,” he said.

“So it’s really good that I have run a pb this year but realistically we always knew that it was the second year that it was going to make an impact.

“I’m working with Kevin Tyler and Steve Fudge and it seems to be going well.

The first major champs we hit were the European Indoors and we seemed to execute quite well there.

“And then I made this team as well and while I am not running as fast as I maybe thought I would be so far I definitely think there is more there.”

• Richard Buck has been selected for the Aviva GB&NI Team and is at an Aviva funded preparation camp in Ulsan, Korea.

Aviva, both at home and abroad, are helping the team prepare to compete at their best. To find out more, go to aviva.co.uk/athletics or follow on Twitter @AvivaAthletics”