SONIA O'SULLIVAN may well turn to road racing to expedite her rehabilitation from the problems which plunged her into the biggest crisis of her career during the second half of the track season.

Conscious of the need to rediscover her self belief, she hinted that she may seek suitable road races to ease her way back from the deep trauma of Atlanta and Milan.

"People say I should take a break from racing but I've had my break, even if it was forced on me," she said. "I've had just two races since Atlanta, so whatever the problem is, it certainly isn't fatigue.

"There are a lot of suppositions about where it went wrong for me but I've no doubt that my biggest problem since Atlanta has been getting properly focused.

"My whole year was built around the Olympic Games and when it didn't happen for me there, I just lost interest. That's why I'm now thinking about road racing and the chance of getting back into serious competition.

"It would be a big change for me but perhaps that is what I need to get back my concentration. At this point, I don't have any definite plans but there will be opportunities to run on the roads and I will probably take them."

Definitely off the agenda is the big track meeting in Tokyo where she won so impressively last year. In her present fragile form, she is in no condition to take on the athletes who have usurped her kingdom in 1500 and 5000 metres competition.

That point is conceded by her handlers but for all the stunning disappointment of the last two months, she has no doubt that she can get back to where she was when she completed her pre-Olympic programme in London on July 12th.

"It's been a tough time but I'll just write it off as a bad experience and start again in the New Year. I've had a lot of success in the past but I've never forgotten that there is another side to the sport.

"Other people have had their bad times and come back. If they can do it, so can I. I don't pretend that it hasn't been hard but in a sense that can work to my advantage.

"I learned from the Chinese experience in Stuttgart and once I get fully focused, I hope to be back stronger than ever next year when the world championships in Athens will give me all the incentive I need."

It is a measure of O'Sullivan's popularity both on and off the circuit, that even at the height of her success, she never enjoyed as much goodwill as in the last two months. That is reassuring but at the centre of the great debate as to how her career became derailed is, undeniably, a confused athlete.

Typical was her reaction in Milan last Saturday when in the aftermath of her latest ordeal in the Grand Prix 5000 metres final, she intimated that she was going to run in Sarajevo just 48 hours later.

That appearance, perhaps fortunately, didn't take place but it bespoke the trauma of a person engulfed in a crisis of confidence and desperately trying to find a way out it.

Now, more than ever, she urgently needs sound advice from those who were at her side on her spectacular climb to the top of the world ratings. There are indications that at least some of them were ignored in the ill advised decision to go to Milan after the disturbing evidence of her workouts.

That was an error which she cannot afford to repeat but when the debris has been cleared away and the critical judgements made, the hope is that Sonia O'Sullivan will once more be a name to command the admiration of her peers.