O'Sullivan remains confident

ATHLETICS/Great Ireland Run: Sonia O'Sullivan remains confident that she can "turn that corner" and rediscover her best form on the track in the weeks ahead, despite the somewhat muted start to her season.

She will next race over 1,500 metres in Madrid on Saturday and her goal is to try to secure a victory.

Speaking in Dublin yesterday for the announcement of the new Bupa Great Ireland Run, which takes place on October 5th, O'Sullivan put her recent performances down to the continuous hard training in the past few weeks in her effort to make up for the time lost through injury earlier this year.

"Well I'm still a bit behind on things," she admitted, "because I did miss out on a lot of training this year until March. But I still have a bit of time to build on what I've been doing.

"Training has been going well though, so it's a bit surprising that I haven't been racing as well. It might be the combination of doing the racing and the hard training at the same time, and not getting much chance to rest. But the time to rest is coming soon."

Her fifth-place finish over 3,000 metres in Gateshead last Sunday, clocking eight minutes 49.46 seconds, was an improvement on her first race of the season in Lausanne, but it is clear the Olympic silver medallist is looking for more positive runs over the coming weeks in the build up to next month's World Championships in Paris.

"I suppose last Sunday was an improvement. It was a bit faster than Lausanne, so I'm moving in the right direction. Just not as fast as I want to be. But you can't always have things the way you want, so I'll be patient and keep doing what I'm doing and eventually I will turn that corner."

For now O'Sullivan has targeted the London Grand Prix on Friday, August 8th, as her sole top-class 5,000 metres before Paris, with another 1,500 metres at the national championships which take place two days later. She also hinted at keeping her options open for Paris, and perhaps running the 1,500 metres rather than the 5,000 metres.

She has also committed herself to the new Great Ireland Run, which was previously run as the Loughrea road race in Galway, but is now moved to the Phoenix Park in Dublin in order to make it a mass-participation event similar to other Great Run events in England, Scotland and Ethiopia.

Also present for yesterday's launch was event organiser and Britain's former distance running star Brendan Foster. He anticipated the event would attract around 6,000 runners for the first year, but that should build to over 10,000 in the years ahead.

"The event will also have a mix of some of Europe's top runners lining up alongside the fun runners," he said, "so it promises to be a truly great event."

Two charities have been nominated for proceeds from the race, Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, and the Maria Keating Foundation, set up by singer Ronan Keating in honour of his mother.

Entries for the race, which will also be ideal preparation for the Dublin City Marathon on October 27th, can be found on the Great Run website at www.greatrun.org and also from the Great Ireland hotline at (01) 868 0088.

The Loughrea road race, meanwhile, will continue to be organised by the local running club.