Sprinter excelling on several fronts

AWARDS: Ask any sprinter what's the one double he or she would most like to win - but is probably hardest to pull off - and you'll be told it's the 200 and 400 metres. The demands in terms of speed and speed endurance combine to make the double a killer, and are what usually put runners off.

So to achieve that double as Joanne Cuddihy did at the national championships in Santry last month required special talent and determination, not least as it involved four races in just over 24 hours. Cuddihy won the 200-metre final in a personal best of 23.33 seconds, then came out the next day and won the 400 metres in 51.28 - another best and a championship record that moved her to second on the Irish all-time women's list.

All that is enough to make the Kilkenny athlete the deserving VHI/Irish Times Sportswoman of the Month for July.

Cuddihy's efforts are especially meritorious considering she has endured crippling setbacks in the past two years: a bad bout of glandular fever and two knee operations.

Then there's the small distraction of her medical studies. At 22, she is clearly only getting going.

"I suppose what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," she said after her national sprint double. "Thankfully I've had no setbacks at all this year, and that's made all the difference."

Cuddihy went into those championships with a best of 51.63, having started the season with a best of 52.94, set three years ago. The seven-year-old Irish record of 51.07 held by Karen Shinkins should also be hers sooner rather than later, and perhaps as soon as the European championship semi-final in Gothenburg later today.

She's definitely a safe bet to become the first Irishwoman to break 51 seconds. She has all the attributes: she's six feet tall, has a long, powerful stride and is blessed with the mental strength to get the best out of herself when it matters most.

Cuddihy hinted at her potential when taking silver at the European junior championships in 2003. She struggled to improve in 2004, before the diagnosis of glandular fever. It was April last year before she fully recovered, only for that summer to end in further disappointment and two knee operations.

"I don't know if I was run down from trying to do too much," she explained, "but I was knocked out for most of that winter . . . I slept a lot."

She hoped to get back racing last summer, but then the knees went: "It was a simple enough thing, like runner's knee, but it requires an operation to knock the loose cartilage off."

Those operations required hours of steady rehabilitation, which Cuddihy had to fit around her medical studies. She'd decided long before leaving school that she wanted to study medicine (her father, Bill, was until recently doctor to the Kilkenny hurlers) and, despite being offered a place in Harvard, settled on UCD.

Now she's trying to combine full-time athletics and full-time studies: "It hasn't been easy. I finished my hospital rotation in June, and I'm doing my GP elective at the moment. The last rotation was in surgery and started at seven in the morning and might finish at 5pm. After that I'd go to bed for an hour, then go training . . . the plan from next March is to maybe take a year out."

This is Cuddihy's first monthly award. It's unlikely to be her last.