Busily making up for lost opportunities

SPORTSWOMAN OF THE MONTH/MARY CULLEN:IT'S AT times like this that we most appreciate the introduction of "The Jessica Rule" three years ago to The Irish Times/Irish Sports Council Sportswomen Awards, after Jessica Kürten had been named Sportswoman of the Month three times in four months.

During that spell her results were so exceptional that she gave the judges no choice but to choose her each time, but it reached a stage where we began to sense she’d be the only contender for the overall prize. So, we decided each sportswoman would be eligible for just one monthly award each year, but that her achievements through the year would be taken into account when the decision on the overall winner was made.

We saluted that rule heartily when we watched Mary Cullen battle her way to a bronze medal at the European Indoor Championships last Sunday. Why? Because we’d already decided she was our February sportswoman of the month. And with the form the 26-year-old from Drumcliffe, Co Sligo is in – bearing in mind the World Championships in Berlin and European Cross-Country Championships in Dublin are still to come – we’d have ended up having to introduce “The Mary Rule”.

Last December Cullen won her first monthly award when she produced an exceptional performance at the European Cross-Country Championships in Brussels, finishing just two seconds off a medal in fourth.

That run came at the end of a desperately frustrating year for the runner when a series of injuries ended her hopes of making it to the Olympic Games.

She said there were times she struggled to “see the light at the end of tunnel” and she had her doubts that she’d ever “be able to get back healthy again”. But Cullen now views missing out on Beijing as “a blessing in disguise”. “It kept me very hungry for the future, and allowed my body to get stronger.”

When she returned, her first race in September in Rhode Island, where she has been based since taking up a sports scholarship at Providence College eight years ago, her confidence was gradually restored, the training she had put in on her comeback putting her in the best conditioning of her career.

After Brussels she travelled to Australia for six weeks’ training over Christmas, and come February, when she ran in the indoor 3,000 metres at the Valentine’s Invitational at Boston University, it was evident all that toil had paid off: she broke Sonia O’Sullivan’s 1997 record, lowering the mark from 8:44.37 to 8:43.74.

“It was special to get one of Sonia’s records, because she’s such an icon, a legend, and someone I’ve always looked up to,” said Cullen.

Breaking that record would have been enough for Cullen to seal our February award, but it is the story behind it, her courage in fighting back from potentially career-ending injuries, that made it the easiest of choices.

And then? She went and won bronze, like Derval O’Rourke, in Turin. “I’ll take any award I’m given,” she laughed when we tracked her down to Drumcliffe yesterday. She is preparing for the Great Ireland Run in April and the World Championships in August.

“It’ll take a few days for me to take it all in,” she said . . . “but it’s great – these days are days to enjoy.” As she said after her final in Turin, “this is why you run. People still talk about money in athletics, but winning medals outweighs money by a long, long way.”

Monthly awards: January: Jessica Kürten (equestrian). Kürten had a great start to the year, the highlights in a string of top five finishes, two successive World Cup Qualifier wins in a week, in Leipzig and Zurich, lifting her back up to sixth in the world rankings.