Dealing with the slip and the slide

Despite her Olympic disappointment and her continuing struggle to find the form that once made her the strongest middle distance runner in the world, three former Irish champions can see light at the end of what has been a dark and traumatic year for Sonia O'Sullivan.

In the months leading up to Athens, O'Sullivan withdrew from the grand prix circuit and changed her coach. Her time in 1997 for the 5,000 metres, the race she hopes to win for a second time, is 15 minutes 17.56 seconds. Her personal best for the distance is 14.41.40. She goes into these World Championships as she has never done before - with her form in shreds.

Ronnie Delany (Olympic 1,500 metres gold medallist, Melbourne 1956).

"It's all a question of timing. The year previous to the Rome Olympics in 1960 I was suffering from achilles tendonitis. I would train and get myself fit in cycles of four months and then the thing would break down again. So before the Rome games I was struggling with a fitness issue and with a suspect tendon.

"Trying to get it right at the right time was the main problem. I wasn't even able to take a trial run prior to the Olympics. In the end I went into the 800 to test my form, but as it happened they had rearranged the schedule with two races on one day and that completely upset my thinking. But two weeks later I ran in a race in Santry and was second to Peter Snell, the 1960 800 Olympic champion, by a yard or so and I beat Herb Elliott, the 1960 Olympic 1,500 champion. That's what I mean by timing.

"You gamble by not pre-racing as Sonia is doing, and you go into the competition hoping that the fitness will be there. In Sonia's case, running the 1,500 makes sense to me in that she may run the event and find that she is quite fit.

"I think she has done something that, under the circumstances, is prudent. She lost form and rather than continuing with a series of further disappointments, she took a positive decision to stop racing. To that degree she is still in control of the situation."

Eamon Coughlan (World 5,000 metres champion, Helsinki 1983).

"I had a slump going into the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow and for many months afterwards. I got sick about two weeks before the Olympics and really suffered like Sonia did last summer. What she went through I went through when I ended up finishing fourth that time. For many months after I dropped out of races in Europe. It completely shattered my confidence. It knocked everything away.

"When I went into races my big concern was would I actually finish. The way I got out of it at the end was to take it very easy for a couple of months and let my body recover. My coach Gerry Farnon told me to take time off and don't even run a step. That's what I did. "Sonia is certainly going through a crisis. There is a lot more pressure on her to try and get out of it. We know what's happened on the grand prix circuit so far - she's got worse and worse. So going into the World Championships, she is very frustrated and she is going in under circumstances that she has never before experienced.

"She's only missed four or five weeks racing and I don't think that will have any effect on her. But I think what she should have done - and I advised her after the run in Sheffield - was to rest up for three or four weeks, get all her energy back and then she might be lucky to pop one big one in the World Championships.

"From the workouts I've been hearing about she doesn't seem to have rested at all. She's still digging deep, looking for it, trying to prove herself out on the track. But the track work-outs have been pretty mediocre, so I really think she's going into the World Championships looking for a miracle. It will be the greatest race of Sonia's life if she gets a medal of any colour in Athens.

John Treacy (Olympic marathon silver medallist, Los Angeles 1984 twice World Cross Country champion).

"I had a slump in my career which I think had to do with lifestyle more than anything. I had two years where I really struggled during a period when I was working full-time and trying to compete as a top-class athlete as well. When I stopped work, it came back quite quickly, but for those 12 months I really did struggle.

"The effect was that you were a different class athlete - and you knew it too. That in turn had an enormous influence on confidence and it showed. In 1983, at the World Championships in Helsinki, I ran in the 10,000. But I was eliminated in the heats because I ran badly.

"I suppose Sonia now is looking for indications that she's going alright again. Of course her confidence will be down, but she will look to see how she does after she runs in the heats and that will tell her a lot. "Every athlete is used to ups and downs and Sonia has been up more than down. I've always said that no matter what level of sport you are at - for every up day, you are also going to have a down day. It's part of reality. Slumps are part of every top athlete's career."