Ireland's big two in great fettle

Athletics Great Ireland Run Two tales of some significance emerged from yesterday's Great Ireland Run in the Phoenix Park. First was Sonia O'Sullivan's refusal to dwell on her painful ordeal at the recent World Championships, and in winning the women's race, her thoughts have already shifted towards next year's Athens Olympics.

Second was the improvement of Catherina McKiernan, who finished 40 seconds behind O'Sullivan with the sort of run that suggested she is not far off becoming a force once again in world athletics. In other words, don't write off either of them just yet.

As a contest the 10km race may have been decided shortly after the early-morning start, but both athletes will take real encouragement from their performances. O'Sullivan ended up running entirely on her own, not ideal considering the tough climb over the closing kilometres. So her winning time of 32 minutes 24 seconds was well satisfying.

"I enjoyed that run," she said, "even though it was pretty cold and got hard towards the end being out there on your own. We were going through parts of the park I've never seen before and some company then would have been nice. But I wanted to go out fast, and try to maintain it for as long as I could."

McKiernan, who like O'Sullivan turns 34 next month, had been finding it hard to regain the old bounce in her legs since resuming serious training a year ago, but yesterday that was there in abundance. She crossed the line in 33:04, still striding freely and with something in reserve.

"It really is starting to come around now," she admitted. "That old rhythm has definitely come back, which I was finding hard to get going again. And I'm not afraid to jump into the harder training sessions now either because there were no injury problems at all after the few races I'd done on the road this summer.

"So it's straight into the cross-country training from here. I want to run the European Championships in December and also some of the Grand Prix races around it. That means I'll probably do the inter-counties race next month."

Third was England's Charlotte Dale (33:23), with Australia's Benita Johnson fourth - remarkable considering she'd taken bronze at the World Half Marathon championships, won by Paula Radcliffe, in Vilamoura the day before.

Australia did produce the winner of yesterday's men's race. Craig Mottram, coached by O'Sullivan's partner, Nic Bideau, pushed the pace from the start and posted 28:36. England's John Mayock took second in 29:07, and Séamus Power led the Irish challenge in third, clocking 29:27.

Peter Mathews finished 14th in 30:21, while Gillian O'Sullivan put on an exhibition of race walking to finish in 46:47 - which left her just outside the top 200 of the some 2,500 finishers.

Ireland won the 10-nation team race combining men and women.

While McKiernan is intent on running the European cross-country, in Edinburgh on December 14th, O'Sullivan will only consider the event after she returns to Australia for her traditional winter training after the Great South Run 10-mile in Portsmouth next Sunday.

"But the next real target for me will be the Athens Olympics," she confirmed.