Cragg hitting form of his life

ATHLETICS:Outside the Nagai Stadium in Osaka there's a countdown clock that currently reads 95, the number of days before the World Athletics Championships begin there on August 25th. For at least three Irish athletes those days can't pass quickly enough as they're clearly coming into the form of their life.

On Sunday Alistair Cragg ran 3:36.18 over 1,500 metres in Carson, California, moving himself up to eighth on the Irish all-time list and also dipping under the 3:36.60 A-standard for Osaka. Impressive as that is, it also came just three weeks after Cragg's new Irish 10,000 metres record of 27:39.55, another A-standard, and he's already qualified over 5,000 metres from last year. That gives Cragg the luxury of choosing between three events, although he's likely to go for the 10,000 metres.

Robert Heffernan and Jamie Costin both claimed A-standards and personal bests at the European Race Walking Cup in Leamington Spa. Heffernan took fifth in the 20km race, his 1:20.15 knocking 10 seconds off his own Irish record, while Costin was 15th over 50km in a best of 3:53.30.

Two other Irish athletes - 400-metre runner Karen Shinkins and long jumper Ciarán McDonagh - have announced they won't be chasing qualification, and instead are joining race walker Gillian O'Sullivan in retirement.

McDonagh turned 31 on Sunday and while that may suggest a couple more years of physical prime time his body was clearly telling him otherwise. If the hardest part of being an elite athlete is knowing when to quit then McDonagh probably had it easy.

Over the past 10 years he'd endured three back operations, countless hamstring pulls and torn Achilles tendons, stress fractures and groin strains, plus the usual battles to secure funding. Yet McDonagh will always be associated with one of the finest Irish performances at the World Athletics Championships, and his national record - a massive eight metres and seven centimetres - is likely to stand well into the future.

Although his great talent was rarely allowed to prosper, McDonagh will never forget the hot night in Seville at the 1999 World Championships when he jumped exactly eight metres - becoming Ireland's first major finalist in the long jump, and the first over the eight-metre mark. Yet a second back operation forced him to miss the Athens Olympics and that was followed by a chronic Achilles tendon injury lasting 18 months. "A lot of those problems were directly related to the long jump," he says. "There is a lot of pounding in the event, and you're in the gym a lot doing a lot of heavy weights. None of that helped."

He had his best winter's training going into 2005 and that August jumped 8.07 in Switzerland - further improving the Irish record he'd first set six years previous: "I thought that would be the platform for a big year in 2006, and my plan was to medal at the European Championships." He started 2006 with another eight-metre jump indoors, but was soon back in the breakdown lane.

Like McDonagh, Shinkins and O'Sullivan also retire with their national records intact, but also medals to their name - World championship silver for O'Sullivan and European Indoor bronze for Shinkins. Unlike records, they can never be taken away, yet nor can McDonagh's place in history as the first Irish athlete to jump eight metres.