The roles of victor and vanquished were starkly defined as the cast of the European 5,000 metres championship came into the mixed zone on their way to the dressing room.

Gabriela Szabo, pale and plainly exhausted, collapsed onto a bench and in moments of quiet reflection, retraced her steps over those last 100 metres when gold turned to a baser metal.

Just yards away, however, her conqueror was again at the centre of a media scrum as she strove to make herself heard above the din and the persistence of men with outstretched tape-recorders.

Wearing a black bow as a mark of respect to those who had died at Omagh, Sonia O'Sullivan, one sensed, was acutely aware of the expectations of a nation. And now that the pressure had been lifted from her, she still needed time to re-adjust to her success.

"Half way down the finishing straight my legs were shaking and I thought the finish line would never come soon enough," she said.

"Unlike last Wednesday, there was no time to think about winning, no time to think about what I'd do when I went over the line. At that point, I had no idea how far she [Szabo] was behind me. All I knew was that I had to keep running as hard as I could.

"Then suddenly it was over and I was in shock for a split second. I couldn't believe that I'd won - it was a remarkable feeling.

"I always believed that I had a real chance of winning and to that extent, I ought to have been prepared for what I would do at the finish. In a sense, that was a tribute to Szabo and the respect I felt for her.

"I had seen her back too often in 1,500 metres races this season, not to have respect. And I knew too, that she had run four seconds faster than me for the 3,000 metres.

"Gabriela likes to run from the front. But I think she panicked this time because of the lack of pace in the front lap. That suited me fine, of course, but in fact, I wasn't aware of what kind of pace we were running. I just keep counting laps and reassuring myself that there were only so many to go.

"My coach Alan Storey told me to put all thoughts of the double out of my mind and just concentrate on what was happening around me. He assured me that I'd get a medal and if it was gold, so much the better. But the bottom line was to go out and try to enjoy myself.

"This was different from the 10,000 metres. Then I was competing against the distance - here I was competing against people and mentally, that was more exhausting.

"It's been a long but exciting week for me. I came here hoping that I'd win two titles but I daren't become too confident. Now it's over and yes, I think I'll have a little celebration this evening."

Back in the pack, Una English, like Valerie Vaughan was too preoccupied with her own challenge to watch the absorbing battle going on ahead of her.

But, perhaps, she wrote the perfect epitaph to another great occasion when she said: "For the rest of us it was tough work but Sonia made it all look so easy. She is simply a brilliant athlete".