Illness forces McKiernan to withdraw

ATHLETICS: Illness has forced Catherina McKiernan to withdraw from Saturday's Belfast International cross country race, which was expected to mark another major step in her comeback to competitive running.

Race organiser Brian Hill received a fax to his office late on Monday night informing him of McKiernan's withdrawal. It was known that McKiernan's training had been curtailed over Christmas through illness, and she had also withdrawn from another planned race in Brussels late last month.

"To be honest I wasn't hugely surprised to hear about her withdrawal," said Hill yesterday. "Of course it would have been great for her to run here but we were never 100 per cent certain that she was ready to compete."

It is still hoped McKiernan can return to somewhere near full fitness in time for the World Cross Country championships in Lausanne next March. In late November she completed her first cross country race after almost four years of injury in Roeselare, Belgium, taking ninth place. Afterwards she spoke of her renewed enthusiasm for competitive running, while admitting she was still a long way off her best.

As four-time world cross country silver medallist and former European champion, McKiernan's addition to the Irish team in Lausanne would be huge. Yet the coming weeks will prove crucial in her quest to return to competitive running, and any further setbacks would almost certainly rule her out of the remainder of the cross country season.

Seamus Power has also been forced to withdraw from the men's race in Belfast. A heavy dose of the flu over Christmas severely limiting his training.

"I actually didn't run a step for two weeks," he said yesterday. "Thankfully I'm back training, but I'm just not ready to race yet."

Power will instead spend a month's altitude training in Spain, and use the AAI National Inter-club Championships in Rathdrum on March 2nd as his main target before the world championships.

There is still strong Irish interest in the women's race in Belfast through Ann Keenan-Buckley and Maria McCambridge. Both athletes will be chasing top finishes after their fourth and fifth places respectively in Newcastle last Saturday.

Kenya's Salina Kosgei, the Commonwealth Games 10,000 metres champion, and American Colleen de Reuck, world championship bronze medallist, will provide the main opposition.

The men's international race will be headed by triple European champion Sergiy Lebid of the Ukraine, along with the Kenya's world 5,000 metres champion Richard Limo and Ethiopia's world junior cross country champion Gebre Eghiabher Gebremariam.

Sonia O'Sullivan, meanwhile, who is training at her usual winter base in Falls Creek outside of Melbourne, has been named in three events in the Track and Field News 2002 world top-10 rankings - traditionally one of the most important rankings in athletics.

Her highest ranking is third-place over 10,000 metres (behind Britain's Paula Radcliffe and China's Yingjie Sun), with a sixth-place ranking in the 5,000 metres and seventh-place ranking over 3,000 metres. Geraldine Hendricken, who made significant improvement over 1,500 metres in 2002, narrowly missed out on a top-10 ranking in her distance.