O'Sullivan enjoys useful tune-up

Sonia O'Sullivan made further progression towards both her indoor and cross-country ambitions in the weeks ahead with a useful win over 1,500 metres at the Victorian Championships in Melbourne on Saturday.

The race may have been an otherwise all-Australian affair but it provided O'Sullivan with her first test of form on the track since December when she took the Australian 10,000 metres title. Her time of four minutes 12.01 seconds left her a full two seconds ahead of runner-up Georgie Clarke.

After leading for most of the way, the Olympic silver medallist closed with a 46-second final 300 metres - exactly the sort of speed she will be looking for in the World Indoor Championships in Lisbon on March 9th-11th. The next test will come over a similar distance in the Sydney Grand Prix on Friday.

"I've come out of this race confident that everything is going in the right direction. It's set me up for a few more races in the weeks ahead and it's also nice to get a break from all the hard training. I've been churning it out now since November and it does take a while to adjust to the track. But I'm happy now that I'll get back to it in time for Lisbon."

Although O'Sullivan has been pre-selected for both the 1,500 and 3,000 metres in Lisbon, she indicated yesterday that she is almost certain to target the longer distance. It was also revealed this weekend that her Romanian rival Gabriela Szabo has an eye on both distances, similar to the double she achieved in the last World Indoors in Japan two years ago.

Also making significant progress towards Lisbon was Daniel Caulfield, who set a new Irish indoor record on Saturday when winning the 800 metres at the Valentine's Meeting in Boston. Caulfield clocked 1:47.21, a marginal improvement on the 1:47.26 set by James Nolan in Stockholm in February 1999.

It also booked Caulfield's place on the Irish team as it was under the 1:48.00 A-qualifying standard.