O'Sullivan happy with her progress

Sonia O'Sullivan finished in ninth place over 1,500 metres at the Bislett Games in Oslo last night. O'Sullivan's run of four minutes 1.70 seconds - her fastest time since 1998 and less than three seconds outside her lifetime best - came in what was the highest quality field assembled this year.

Victory went to American Suzy Hamilton in 3:57.40, a personal best and the fastest in the world this year, but Olympic champion Svetlana Masterkova of Russia could only manage fifth.

O'Sullivan said afterwards: "For me the important thing was to run as fast as I could and in that sense I was pleased with my time. I felt pretty good throughout the race and that was another encouraging aspect for me. I'm very much in 5,000-metre training at the moment and looking forward to running that distance in London next week."

In the men's event, Mark Carroll produced the second-fastest mile time ever by an Irishman outdoors when finishing seventh in three minutes 50.62 seconds. It was an improvement of just over two seconds and only Ray Flynn's Irish record of 3:49.77 - set in 1982 - is faster.

Running in the last ever edition of the Dream Mile, Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj was just over three seconds outside his own mark, finishing in 3:46.24. After running the final 600 metres alone, he finished with his target of three minutes 43.13 seconds well beyond reach.

Elsewhere, Trinidadian Ato Boldon was a clear winner in the 100 metres in 10.00 seconds flat - comfortably ahead of America's Brian Lewis (10.12 secs) and his countryman Tim Montgomery (10.14 secs).

No one had yet broke 13 minutes for the 5,000 metres in the Bislett stadium but last night Kenya's Sammy Kipketer, who failed to make the Kenyan team for Sydney, came home in 12:55.03.

Ciaran McDonagh makes his return to long jump competition at today's Dublin International in Santry. It will be his first outing since the World Championships in Seville last August when McDonagh jumped eight metres to become the first Irishman over that barrier.

That earned him a place in the final where he subsequently finished 10th but since then McDonagh has been plagued by injury. High jumper Brendan Reilly, however, has been forced to pull out of Santry after suffering a minor injury.

One of the highlights of today's competition is set to be the men's 400 metres which includes 10 overseas athletes with personal bests of 45 seconds. Starting times of the track events have been brought forward to 1.30 p.m..