No happy ending as O'Sullivan's year grinds to a halt

ATHLETICS: So there won't be any fairytale ending to the year for Sonia O'Sullivan. Instead of trying to win the European cross country in two weeks time, and in some way erase further the bad memories of the Athens Olympics, O'Sullivan has accepted that her season is done, and there's no point in pretending otherwise.

Though originally intent on being part of the Irish team that travels to Heringsdorf in Germany on Sunday week, O'Sullivan felt her current fitness just wasn't where it needed to be. The Athletics Association of Ireland (AAI) had included her on the team subject to her own confirmation later this week, but yesterday afternoon they got the news they didn't want - O'Sullivan was out.

It means the Irish teams for Heringsdorf are built almost entirely on the leading finishers from Sunday's Intercounties championships in Dungarvan. As a result they're probably a lot weaker than the AAI had anticipated some months back, and there's certainly no chance of the senior women repeating the silver medals won in Edinburgh last year.

O'Sullivan had led that team home with her fourth place finish, and felt she could possibly go even better this time. But while running the London 10km road race on Sunday, the day she also turned 35, it was clear her form just wasn't good enough.

She finished fifth in 34 minutes six seconds, a long way down on the winning time of 32:33 by England's Jo Pavey.

"I feel I ran okay in London," she said yesterday, "but not good enough for me to go to the Europeans. I had also missed an amount of training in the past few weeks because of injury, and I'm really only getting back to full fitness after that."

O'Sullivan will now shortly travel to Australia for the winter months, and will possibly prepare for a marathon some time in the spring. Her withdrawal means the top six women home in Dungarvan on Sunday, led by Maria McCambridge, are now headed for the Europeans.

Both the junior teams were selected on the same basis, and there are hopes that Mark Christie - sixth last year - might this time get into the individual medals in the junior men's race. His win on Sunday suggested he's in the form to do just that.

But there was one exception in the senior men's team in that Dublin's Cian McLoughlin was rejected in favour of Cork's Fiachra Lombard, the younger brother of Cathal Lombard, currently serving a two-year ban for abusing the endurance drug EPO.

Fiachra Lombard was a late withdrawal from Dungarvan because of illness, but was nonetheless still chosen on current form. It means that McLoughlin, the sixth man home on Sunday, is now squeezed out, and not entirely unfairly. Although he has struggled for much of the past two years with injury, Fiachra, now based in Birmingham, apparently did enough to impress the selectors by winning the Margate cross country in England.

Cathal Lombard, incidentally, was a spectator in Dungarvan on Sunday. He refused to talk to journalists, claiming that he "didn't like what they wrote about him".

The other main event in Irish athletics at the weekend was the meeting between the AAI executive and the Irish Sports Council, which took place in Dungavan on the eve of the Intercounties.

Yesterday the international secretary of the AAI, Liam Hennessy, described the outcome of the meeting as "badly needed". It was agreed the management of Irish athletics would change significantly, and the planning process would begin with the appointment of an independent chairperson, to work with representatives of the AAI, the Irish Schools Athletics Association (ISAA), and the Irish Sports Council.

"There's nothing revolutionary here," said Hennessy, "but quite clearly the Sports Council wanted to know exactly where our future plans were going. I know it's something we have been pondering for quite some time, and the appointment of an independent facilitator will now make sure we see it through.

"Obviously a lot of this concerns the governing of our sport, and we need clearer guidelines between the voluntary end and the professional end."

A statement from the Irish Sports Council outlined the following priorities for the future of Irish athletics:

IRISH TEAM (European Cross Country Championships, Heringsdorf): Senior men - Vinnie Mulvey (Raheny Shamrocks), Gary Murray (St Malachy's), Mark Kenneally (Clonliffe), Eoin Higgins (St Coca's), Paul McNamara (Athenry), Fiachra Lombard (Leevale). Senior women - Maria McCambridge (DSD), Jolene Byrne (Donore), Deirdre Byrne (Slí Chulainn), Mary Margaret Meade (North Belfast), Pauline Curley (Tullamore), Orla O'Mahony (UCD). Junior Men - Mark Christie (Mullingar), Andrew Ledwith (Fr Murphy), Mark Hanrahan (Leevale), Jamie McCarthy (Riverstick/Kinsale), Danny Darcy (St Laurence O'Toole); Joe Sweeney (DSD). Junior Women - Roseanne Galligan (Newbridge), Linda Byrne (DSD), Tracey Williams (Tallaght), Ashling Baker (DSD). Aoife Talty (Raheny Shamrock), Breffni Twohig (DSD).