Peter Coghlan's hopes of capping his first full season on the professional circuit with a place in the final of the world 110 metres hurdles championship were lost in the high tension of the Olympic Stadium in Seville last evening. Unable to find anything extra in the urgency of the biggest test of his career, Coghlan departed the championships after finishing fifth in the first of the semi-finals in 13.35 seconds.
With the first four in each race going through it wasn't enough to sustain the impetus the Dubliner has acquired this summer, and although he was eighth fastest overall, his role for this evening's final will be that of just a disappointed onlooker.
The race was won by Duane Ross, who, taking over from Mark Crear as the top American contender for the title, showed the way home from Florian Schwarthoff (Germany), Yoel Hernandez (Cuba) and Fulk Balzer (Germany) in 13.14 seconds. In the other semi-final, Colin Jackson, who won this title at Stuttgart six years ago, finished second to the Cuban Anier Garcia in 13.18. But the Welshman may yet prove sufficiently recovered from his proliferation of injury problems to reverse those placings on the day it matters most.
For Coghlan, however, rehabilitation is the immediate priority after the first hitch in a season which has gone better than even he can have justifiably expected. He was the last of the eight starters to leave the blocks and yet had recovered sufficiently to be with the leaders over the second hurdle. His technique was sharp enough to bear comparison with the best, but momentary lapses in concentration cost him dearly in the middle of the race. With two hurdles left he was still on course for qualification, but he was unable to respond when Schwarthoff, running strongly in the outside lane, and Hernandez made decisive charges off the last barrier.
"My reaction and block clearance weren't the best, and my run to the first is still inconsistent," Coghlan said. "I didn't run a great race, but I can't be too disappointed with the way I've progressed this season.
"Running in the inside lane didn't help, but it didn't cost me either. I felt that having (Robin) Korving (Holland) running immediately outside me would be a help, but I led him all the way."
Earlier yesterday, Gary Ryan and Paul Brizzell, the Irish representatives in the 200 metres, discovered, as we feared, that the gap between domestic and world championship standards is still tantalisingly out of reach. Although neither ran to his full potential they performed quite creditably - and still missed the cut for the second round of the competition. With three to qualify, Brizzell finished fourth in heat five and then realised that his time of 21.02 wasn't good enough to qualify him as one of the two fastest losers.
Just a couple of metres ahead of him in third place was the championship favourite, Maurice Greene, but the American knew exactly what he had to do to qualify and did it with something approximating to disdain. Brizzell, by contrast, was all toil and tribulation as he sought in vain to sustain the momentum of his run over the last 50 metres.
That has been a recurring frailty in the performances of the Irish athletes here, and it showed again in heat 10 when Ryan hit late trouble to finish fifth of seven in 20.86, more than a fifth of a second slower than his national record. It left the Nenagh man deeply disappointed. "I set myself certain goals in big championships and this run didn't meet them," he said. "I was away pretty well, but once again I didn't go through with my run at the finish. "It's not the first time it's happened this season and it's a worry. Normally I focus on the leader in the closing stages of big races, but this time I found myself looking at the second and third runners. That just wasn't me, and now I have to look again at my performance and try to pinpoint where it went wrong."
Of the three Irish sprinters in action yesterday morning, Ciara Sheehy was closest to her best. Although she could finish only sixth in the heat, won by Debbie Ferguson, Sheehy, a product of BLE's new coaching structures, ran 23.54 to fail by just 17/100ths of a second to progress as one of the fastest losers. It was an encouraging run by the young Dubliner on the biggest assignment of her career and may serve as valuable preparation for the even bigger test of Olympic competition next season. Marion Jones recovered from the disappointment of losing the long jump championship on Tuesday to progress to the semi-finals of this championship today, but the fastest of the morning qualifiers was Beverly McDonald of Jamaica with figures of 22.52. This evening the spotlight will be on the semi-finals of the 5,000 metres. In the case of Mark Carroll that offers the opportunity of salvaging something from a curiously uneven season for the European bronze medallist at Budapest last August. Running in last month's Monte Carlo Grand Prix, Carroll set a national 3,000 metres record of seven minutes 30.36, a superb run which contrasted starkly with much of what went before and since. Later, however, he admitted the effort had taken a lot out of him. "I had pains across my shoulders for some time after the race it was one of the toughest runs I've ever had," he said. "After that I was in no condition to run the London Grand Prix, but now at last I think I'm in shape for another big race. I think the two semi-finals will be run like grand prix races, so I'll have to be in the top five to make certain of qualifying. I'm confident that I'm ready for that."
Ominously, the two Spaniards who finished in front of Carroll in in Budapest, Isaac Viciosa and Mauel Pancorbo, will again line up with him this evening. But the race will almost certainly be dominated by the championship favourite, Daniel Koeman of Kenya. For the first time Ireland will be represented in the 50 kilometres walk this morning, and the honour goes to Jeff Cassin, a Canadian living in Mexico who qualified to wear the green singlet through his Derry ancestry.
