ATHLETICS:David Gillick has made some brave calls in the past. He turns 28 today and may now be facing another big decision, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

I WAS chatting with Greg Allen last night, before he set off to cover the British Open at Royal St George’s. “Sure McIlroy will win that handy enough,” I said, knowing full well this would spark a furious response on why the golf majors, unlike the major athletics championships, are desperately unpredictable.

Greg and I share what some people would describe as a disturbing fascination with the facts and figures of this sport, and once consumed an entire keg of Smithwick’s discussing the implications of Sonia O’Sullivan wearing black socks in the Olympic 5,000 metres in Sydney. (Greg is convinced this is the reason Sonia won silver and not gold).

“No, no,” he said. “McIlroy does have it all, so smooth to watch, like a cross between Sebastian Coe and Eamonn Coghlan. If he gets it right he will win. But we’ve all seen he also has the potential to get it wrong.”

Greg’s fascination with golf is definitely disturbing, at least to someone who has never played the game, although there’s little doubt he knows what he’s talking about. “Then again,” he added, “I remember being in the throes of ecstatic commentary as Harrington won the British Open in 2008, and who knocks on the front of my booth only George Kimball, with a cartoon smile, and promptly plasters his winning Harrington docket across the glass. George was actually great at predicting the golf majors.”

These are the kind of stories that have been doing the rounds these past few days: first time I met George Kimball he was wearing a black leather jacket and black cotton pants, with a matching black baseball cap – and he was sweating like a maniac. Only later did I discover this was typical of the man: we were in Athens for the 2004 Olympics, under the searing heat and melting sun of the Greek summer, but Kimball wasn’t going to let that cramp his style.

We’d just arrived at the security gate into the Main Press Centre, and while the rest of us unpacked our laptops and other paraphernalia, Kimball walked straight on through, puffing heavily on a cigarette. Not only was he characteristically undaunted by the so-called greatest show on earth, Kimball had that unmistakable look of someone you probably shouldn’t mess with.

I asked him about his relationship with Coghlan, knowing Kimball had witnessed and written extensively about the Chairman of the Boards on the US Indoor circuit throughout the 1980s, and that they’d just started collaborating on a book. “The hard part is deciding what to leave out,” he told me, “because Eamonn has so much to put in.”

After that we walked towards the rows of shelving that lined one wall of the Main Press Centre, while I gathered countless sheets of start lists, athlete biographies, daily results and other random statistics to help strengthen what was my debut at Olympic reporting. Kimball just stopped and stared right at me.

“Where the hell are you going with all those stats? Just write the damn story as you see it!”

He didn’t actually say that, but I somehow knew that’s what he was thinking. Kimball was never one to get bogged down in facts and figures: he’d much rather tell a good story – and who wouldn’t much rather read that?

Take for example David Gillick: in his first five races over 400 metres this summer, the former two-time European Indoor champion has yet to break 46 seconds. In fact his best is only 46.64, which he ran in New York last month, and ranks considerably slower that what he was capable of back in 2004, when he ran 46.27. In the six years since he’d been more or less steadily improving: 45.93 in 2005, 45.67 in 2006, 45.23 in 2007, 45.12 in 2008, 44.77 in 2009, and 44.79 in 2010. Even though there was a very minor drop off in 2010, Gillick ran under 45 seconds on two other occasions – 44.95 and 44.98 – and believe me, that’s superb running by any standards.

It’s difficult to explain just how fast 44.77 seconds actually is: if Gillick ran that time right now he’d be the third fastest in the world this year, and indeed it ranked him seventh in the world in 2009, the same year he became the first Irishman to make the World Championship final.

The only real problem with his form last year was finishing fifth at the European Championships in Barcelona – albeit it was .05 of a second away from a medal – because for many people that was a big failure, and ultimately Gillick saw it that way too.

The difficulty right now is explaining why Gillick can only run 46.64 – because it’s not like he hasn’t tried hard to improve it. Last Friday in Lausanne he foolishly false-started, then even more inexplicably, followed up last Sunday with a 47.21 in La Chaux-de-Fonds. So what IS going on?

Gillick turns 28 years old today, and would do well to forget about facts and figures for a while. Michael Johnson was 32 when he set his 400m world record of 43.18, so Gillick definitely has time on his side – or at least enough time to regain his true form ahead of next summer’s London Olympics.

There are probably some deeper issues affecting Gillick’s form, going back to his brave yet risky decision last November to move to Clermont, Florida – about 22 miles west of Orlando – and train under the unknown eyes of Lance Brauman, coach to American sprint champion Tyson Gay, amongst others.

There aren’t many distractions in Orlando and Gillick inevitably found himself a little homesick, and maybe a little culture-shocked too. Perhaps it’s still too soon to know just how productive his winter was in the Sunshine State, but if Gillick needs to take another brave yet risky decision, and look beyond the World Championships in Daegu at the end of next month and towards the London Olympics next summer, then now is the time to make it.

Unlike the golf majors, the World Athletics Championships are easy to predict – and if Gillick is not running closer to 45 seconds then there’s no reason to be there. Sometimes there’s no denying the facts and the figures: if he needs to go back to the drawing board – or more specifically back to his former training base in Loughborough – he’ll need to do it now.

And unlike golf, form in athletics nearly always translates into success: Kate Veale winning Ireland’s first ever gold medal at the IAAF World Youths Championships in Lille yesterday was merely a reflection of her race-walking form. Earlier this summer she won the bronze medal in the European Cup junior race, at age 17, against girls several years older.

But sometimes sport is about rolling with the punches, and no one understood that better than George Kimball. Last time I met him, he was in Dublin launching two of his books at the same time. His way of dealing with the oesophageal cancer that ended his life last Wednesday night wasn’t so much to fight it but to forget about it. Who needs to worry about facts and figures?