OLYMPIC heartache turned to joy for Stuart Stokes when he earned a fairytale call-up to the Great Britain Olympic squad.

The 35-year-old 3,000m steeplechaser quit athletics when he was denied a place at the 2008 Games in Beijing because he was deemed to old.

But the former British number one refused to give up on his Olympic dream and got the ultimate reward when the GB athletics squad was announced yesterday.

After hearing the news, Stokes, who will be the oldest male member of the British team, told The Bolton News: “I can’t believe it. I just got a phone call telling me I was in the team and I’m going to the Olympics. It’s incredible.”

The Bolton born and bred athlete was the shock choice in the 71-strong squad, and will fly the flag as Bolton’s only track and field athlete to go to London 2012.

After suffering the agony of four years ago, when he set his career-best time of 8min 23.66sec in the run-up to the Olympics and was comfortably ranked second in the country, he can now look forward to running in front of 80,000 people and a television audience of hundreds of millions in the country’s greatest sporting showpiece ever. Stokes, who has never received funding from his sport and has been supported throughout his career by his parents, became a landscape gardener after he turned his back on athletics following his Olympic agony of 2008.

He was furious at what he saw as a travesty of justice at being omitted from the Olympic team on account of his age and the assumption that he would not be a potential medal winner of the future.

He continued to keep himself fit, doing the Ironman UK triathlon in Bolton the following year. He also trained to become a PE teacher and now works at Holy Cross High School in Chorley.

The pull of athletics saw him return to competition the following year, and did well enough to qualify for his third Commonwealth Games, finishing the season representing England in Delhi.

He produced modest times in his three competitive performances last season, before knuckling down to a Rocky-style training schedule last autumn, which has seen him come back to his best this summer.

“I’ve been up at 4.30am every morning, seven days a week, to do my training, and been in bed every night at 7.45pm,” said Stokes, a veteran of three Commonwealth Games, including Manchester 2002 when he finished just outside the medals in fourth.

“That’s been my routine, and I’ve not had a single day off from that, because if you do you mess up your whole body clock. Everything’s been aimed at getting to the Olympics and it’s paid off.

“This is my reward for slogging it out for 20 years and I’m just going to enjoy every single second of it.

“I am just going to go there and embrace the whole experience.”

Stokes, who grew up in Bradshaw and now lives in Chorley Old Road, Horwich, stunned his rivals when he came out of nowhere to run the Olympic qualifying time twice this summer.

His two times of 8min 29sec rank alongside the best of his career, and meant he was first in line to get the place in the British squad as long as his two main rivals did not run a second qualifying time in the last fortnight.

“I’ve had to fit in training between getting the right amount of sleep and holding down a full-time job as a PE teacher, as well as having two kids.

“I got myself into great shape and then ran the qualifying time in Brussells and then in Spain within 10 days of each other.

“Then I tweaked a hamstring and couldn’t run in the Olympic Trials or the European Championships. I knew I was in a good position to get the place for the Olympics, but all I could do was sit and hope it wasn’t taken from me.”