Sonia aims to banish concerns

ATHLETICS: Right now it's crossing Scandinavia but in exactly six weeks' time the Olympic flame will perform its main function.

Some lucky individual, presumably recognisable to the world, will carry it into the shining new Athens stadium and set alight the opening of the Olympic Games. Fittingly enough, considering the organisational problems to date, it will be Friday the 13th. An extra set of matches will be at hand.

Just who will carry the Irish flag in that same ceremony remains a closely guarded secret, but whoever it is will at least look the part. Yesterday in the green pavilion of Trinity College the outfit to be worn by the Irish team was modelled by Sonia O'Sullivan, who carried the flag four years ago in Sydney before going on to win the Olympic silver medal over 5,000 metres.

Four years on and O'Sullivan remains one of the few Irish medal contenders for Athens. Her form hasn't been the most consistent - and last Sunday's run over 1,500 metres in Gateshead was particularly poor - but Athens remains her one and only true destination of the season.

In tomorrow's Cork City Sports at the Mardyke she'll continue on that path, taking in possibly her last 5,000-metre race before Athens.

The organisers have put together a decent field, including two Russians and the best of the other Irish, but O'Sullivan wants to win and win well.

"I'm looking forward to it now," she said yesterday. "I've taken it quite easy this week, and I should be feeling good there. And it's an important race for me. I'm going to sit down and decide what I want out of it. I did the same thing last year. Hopefully that plan will work out."

Clearly she's not dwelling on last Sunday, where her 10th-place finish in a slow four minutes 15.59 seconds fuelled some concerns about her Olympic preparations: "I went in there not thinking too much about it. And in a way I have drifted away from 1,500-metre races, and I'm not really preparing for them as much as I would have done in the past. So I suppose if I was to do it again, well I wouldn't.

"And I'd been training quite hard going into it, especially the two weeks beforehand. I was enjoying that and getting a lot of work done, but maybe not realising how hard I was training. And so I definitely wasn't as rested as I could have been. But it was always a preparation race.

"Then when you go in there you expect the race to be just like training. But it is different. Of course I've been around long enough that I should know these thing. So you're always learning stuff."

After Cork, O'Sullivan will carefully choose a handful of races before Athens, the only definite one being the 3,000 metres in Zurich on August 6th. She'll probably also run on July 17th in Madrid, where she intends basing herself for at least a couple of weeks, partly to acclimatise to the kind of heat expected in Athens. But she won't arrive in Athens until days before her 5,000-metre heats, set for the opening day of the athletics programme - August 20th. By then Gateshead will seem like a million miles away.

"In those kind of things, like Gateshead, I just feel like I'm going through the motions. But the Olympics and everything around it has a certain energy that still does it for me. And I want to be in there as a part of it and do the best I can. And I remember well my first Olympics in Barcelona, which was the second-best after Sydney. I think Athens will be similar to Barcelona, just the whole culture of it being in a European city."

The Cork City Sports provide the last opportunity for Irish runners still seeking qualification times for Athens, with Gary Ryan and Paul Hession (200 metres) and Gareth Turnbull (1,500 metres) among those still hoping for the necessary standards.

Alistair Cragg was due to run in Cork but instead will run this evening over 5,000 metres in Rome's Golden League meeting, where Mark Carroll is also on the start list.

So far just 13 athletes have secured their place on the Irish Olympic team, which numbers 48 in total - compared to 76 in Sydney - and will be officially announced in Dublin next Wednesday. Pat Hickey, president of the Olympic Council of Ireland, confirmed yesterday that there wouldn't be any late additions to the team after tomorrow's cut-off.

"We're not going back on this decision now," said Hickey. "None of the other sports get any other chances either, and it has to be fair. But I'm more than satisfied that this is the best-prepared Irish team going off to an Olympics, and the co-operation between ourselves and the Irish Sports Council has been fantastic."