Gillick eyes record over 300 metres

ATHLETICS:THE LONG wind-up to the Beijing Olympics is about to begin for David Gillick and Derval O'Rourke. After skipping the entire indoor season, Gillick will race over the rarely-contested 300 metres at Sunday's meeting at Loughborough University, where the Dublin athlete has been based for the last year and a half.

The Irish record stands at 33.36 seconds and should be well within Gillick's range, although all his efforts over the coming weeks are aimed at one thing: trying to make the Olympic 400 metres final.

"I would like to get inside that time, but I want to enjoy it because it's not often that you get to experience something different, and it will tell me something about my current speed and strength too."

O'Rourke had a couple of indoor races but never hit the sort of form she needed to defend her World Indoor 60 metres hurdles title, and her first few races over 100 metres hurdles - starting in Germany on June 6th and 8th, are also eagerly awaited.

"Missing the World Indoors was more disappointing than I thought it would be. But looking back now and the way I'm lifting the weights right now and the way I'm training compared to last year at this time I'm like a totally different person. I just could not do any of that stuff last year. So on reflection missing the indoors was disappointing, but in the scheme of things I did okay."