Luke Cutts will attempt to claim a fourth successive gold medal at the British Indoor Championships this weekend in his first major competition since the Rio Olympics last summer.

The pole vaulter from Thurnscoe – who turns 29 on Monday – will compete at the national event in Sheffield which is also the qualifying competition for the European Indoor Championships in Serbia next month. Cutts has been British champion indoors and out on numerous occasions and is also the UK record holder as well as a Commonwealth Games silver medalist.

His Barnsley-based coach Trevor Fox said: "Luke has a very proud record at the British Championships and he will want to win it for the fourth time in a row and stay unbeaten. He's proved time and again that he is the best pole vaulter in the country and his medal count speaks for itself.

"The next step is to start performing on the international scene and hopefully he can do that at the European indoors."

Cutts' camp were worried last week when he injured his finger. Fox said: "He has been having trouble gripping the poles but it is healing so hopefully it won't cause him any problems at the weekend."

Since missing out on the final in Rio – when he was also suffering with an injury – and then not getting the funding he wanted from UK Athletics, Cutts has had to return to full-time work. Fox said: "He is still managing to fit a lot of training in, even though it's not easy to balance that with his job and having a young family. "He had a break over Christmas but he has come back strong and hopefully this is the start of a really big year for him."

Bolton-upon-Dearne teenager Nicolas Cole, a training partner of Cutts' who is also coached by Fox, will be another competitor in the British Championships this weekend. Fox said: "Nicolas is still very young but he's a very exciting talent and this will be good experience for him. "It will be great for both him and Luke to have a team-mate competing alongside them. Hopefully they both jump well and maybe we could have two British medals coming back to Barnsley."