ATHLETICS: There is a standard format for measuring great athletes. You factor in their times and number of medals, then their range of events. But you top it all off by how they last. The great ones have always cared about how long they lasted.
Great athletes like Zatopek and Viren and Ottey. And like Gebrselassie on Friday night. Their best years and times and medal chances behind them, probably, but still where they wanted to be, their heart and soul still in it. Still striving to be the best. That's greatness.
Sonia O'Sullivan has lasted 15 major championship finals. When she ran the European 3,000-metre final in Split in 1990 we glowed at the prospect of so many years' service at the top of her sport. What she gave us before coming to Athens has long since surpassed expectations.
Her four finals in her previous three Olympics: the innocent fourth in Barcelona, the torment in Atlanta, and the redemption in Sydney - silver in the 5,000 metres and sixth in the 10,000 metres. Take other names from that era like Romanova and Junxia and Szabo and ask where are they now.
Her five World Championship finals. Fourth and then silver from the Chinese supremacy of Stuttgart, that golden moment in Gothenburg, and the harder times of Athens and last summer Paris. Most of those peers too are long since retired.
And her other five European championship finals: gold in Helsinki, gold twice in Budapest, and silver twice in Munich. If you throw in her record in cross-country and indoor championships O'Sullivan is already assured of greatness.
So to tonight's Olympic 5,000 metres, when for the 16th time in that great career O'Sullivan toes the line in a major championship final. The chances are it won't be the race she's remembered for. She's not the oldest of the 15 finalists; the Kenyan Edith Masai is three years older at 37.
But O'Sullivan now looks around and sees mostly faster athletes in their prime. The young, fearless Africans, the Kenyans and Ethiopians, all thinking of medals. She'll see the tiny figure of the race favourite, Elvan Abeylegesse, born in Ethiopia 21 years ago and this summer setting the world record for Turkey, where she's lived for the past five years.
O'Sullivan will see some fresh Russian faces and the latest batch of Chinese, Yingjie Sun and Huina Xing. Some of them will be well able to run under 14 minutes 40 seconds. O'Sullivan's best is 14:41.02.
She'll see 14 other athletes all believing they can win a medal. She'll know none of them expects her to win a medal. At 34 and with that glorious career behind her there is nowhere else in the world she'd rather be.
What has got her there is that drive to prove her lasting greatness. That was evident in Friday's heat when she dug as deep as she needed to get into the final, her seventh-place finish in 14:59.61 ranking her the seventh-fastest on the night. The first heat was won in 15:00.66 by Ethiopia's Tirunish Dibaba, only 19 and already the world champion from Paris last year.
It might be a little premature to say this is the last time we will witness O'Sullivan grace the world stage. But it's likely to be the last chance to see her once more compete on the grandest of stages when long ago she lost the right to be there.
How she runs should ultimately be superfluous to that fact.
If tactically things fall into place, and a steady, rhythmic pace turns it into an honest decider over the last 1,000 metres, then O'Sullivan can finish in the top eight. If it starts burning from the gun and the field is strung out she is in danger of being dropped. If she's still there with a lap to go and regenerates the sort of inspired run she had in Sydney then anything can happen.
She said after Friday's heat she was saving her "huge effort" until the final. And this was the moment she was building for all season.
"Yeah, I did train hard right up until last week," she added. "It's just been a few easy runs since, and relaxing. And I did feel fantastic in Zurich. So I just wanted to get through the heat as relaxed as possible.
"Running under 15 minutes has also given me a lot of confidence. I suppose it won't really suit me to go to the front again, but somebody else will usually take over. But being in the final was always the most important thing. I'll have a plan A, B and C. Hopefully plan A will be the one we will end up with."
Sitting in the stands tonight will be Sonia's daughters, Ciara and Sophie, and her parents, and no doubt enough Irish tricolours to catch her attention. And then the inspiration of the whole Olympic spirit. And with that you're left with the idea that you just never know with O'Sullivan, you just never know.
Long before O'Sullivan goes into action, Olive Loughnane is out in this morning's 20km walk - set for 7 a.m. Irish time. Although her team-mate and medal contender Gillian O'Sullivan is ruled out with injury, the Loughrea athlete can still improve on her 35th place in Sydney.
