O'Rourke to bypass indoor season

ATHLETICS:Derval O'Rourke is set to bypass the indoor season and concentrate all her efforts on peaking for the World Championships in Osaka, Japan next August. While O'Rourke is currently enjoying some warm-weather training in Portugal, a back injury sustained late last year has proven a costly interruption and there are no plans to return to the racing circuit anytime soon.

Originally O'Rourke had set herself two targets for 2007 - the European Indoor Championships in Birmingham, which run from March 2nd-4th, and then the World Championships in Osaka, which run from August 25th to September 2nd. As the reigning World Indoor champion over the 60 metre hurdles O'Rourke was already one of the big favourites for Birmingham, but she is simply not prepared to rush her training in order to reach those championships in any sort of peak.

"Even if I did win the European Indoor title," she explained, "but then didn't make the final of the World Championships in Osaka, I would still consider it a disappointing year. Nothing is set in stone except that Osaka is my major target for the year. Anything outside of that will be a bonus.

"Right now all I'm doing is base training, which normally I would have done back in November and December. So I would be behind where I was this time last year. But the most important thing is to get stronger this year for the outdoor season, and that means indoors just can't be the priority."

O'Rourke is currently based in Monte Gordo, close to the Spanish border, along with her coach, Jim Kilty, and several more of his athletes. She has been training twice daily, and while she will return home this weekend, she is also planning another two-week spell at the venue early next month. While she would be a certain pre-selection for Birmingham she was originally due to race at the National Indoor Championships in Belfast on February 17th-18th, but that event now looks certain to be missed.

It is reckoned her injury problem was partly caused by the introduction of plyo-metric exercises shortly after she returned to training following her silver medal success over the 100 metre hurdles at the European Championships in Gothenburg.

Clearly the Cork athlete is intent on getting stronger for the outdoor season, which she believes is crucial to her lowering again her Irish record of 12.72 seconds, and for that reason alone an indoor season simply doesn't make any sense.

In the meantime, O'Rourke is in line for yet another major sporting award for her success of 2006, as one of the 12 monthly winners of the Irish Times/Vhi Healthcare Sports Woman Award. The overall winner is to be announced at an awards presentation in Dublin tomorrow afternoon.

Ireland will still have several medal contenders for the European Indoors, with Alistair Cragg confirming his intention on being in Birmingham to defend the 3,000 metres title won in Madrid two years ago.

Reigning 400-metre champion David Gillick is also planning an indoor season, as is James Nolan in the 1,500 metres and both Mark Carroll and Gareth Turnbull in the 3,000 metres - all of which are capable of mixing it with the best in Europe. Athletics Ireland has set February 25th as the cut-off date for qualification.