Athletics InterviewIan O'Riordan talks to David Gillick who is thriving on his new-found success in Madrid

It's tough sometimes living the life of a full-time athlete. When David Gillick is asked if he can meet up to talk about turning his indoor 400-metre form to the outdoors, he has to pause for a few seconds. "Yeah, that's not a problem," he says, starting to think out loud. "But I'm free all day. What would suit you?"

So it's lunchtime in the Coach House in Ballinteer, just a short hop from the family home where Gillick grew up and still lives. He's dressed like someone who's been lounging around on the couch all morning.

The guy behind the bar says hello not because he's the European Indoor champion, but because this is one of his old teenage drinking haunts. The only thing that really distinguishes Gillick from everybody else in the place is that he orders a Lucozade, and nothing else. The full-time athlete has to at least watch what he eats and drinks.

It's four months since Gillick went from zero to hero by winning the European Indoor 400 metres in Madrid. On Saturday he runs at the Cork City Sports, his first big appearance on Irish soil since Madrid, and in some ways a sort of homecoming. There's going to be pressure, but he can't wait. "I do want to run well down there," he says. "Hopefully the conditions will be good. It's the only meeting we really have now so it's important to put on a good show."

In a way some of the pressure is already off. At the start of June Gillick went to Turin for his first outdoor 400 metres of the season and ran 45.93 seconds, easily improving his best of 46.27, while becoming the fourth fastest Irishman and dipping inside the B-standard for the World Championships in Helsinki. Two weeks later he went to the European Cup in Portugal and provided the only Irish men's victory, running 45.96 on a slow track.

"For a few weeks before Turin the race was on my mind all the time. I knew people would be wondering how I'd open up outdoors, and what kind of time I'd run. I ended up in lane seven, which actually suited me because I just ran my own race. I felt a little rusty and didn't attack it like I normally would, and even when I finished it didn't feel particularly fast. I saw the winning time was 45.52, but I was back under the tunnel when my coach, Dr Kidd, came in and told me I'd run 45.93. I just thought 'Thank God'."

There is nothing more common in the sport than athletes struggling to transfer their indoor form to the outdoor tracks, especially for a relative novice like Gillick. He doesn't turn 22 until next month, and there was every possibility that his new-found success in Madrid would leave him tired and stale come the summer. So far he's been anything but.

"I took about 10 days off after Madrid, just to clear the head really. I was absolutely knackered for a week, and was also just starting up the work placement with my course in DIT. Since then I've just stuck to the plans we laid down at the start of the year, which by now means backing off on the quantity of the sessions and working more on quality."

All Gillick's training is devised by his coaching team of Jim Kidd, whom he affectionately refers to as Dr Kidd, and Luck Moore, who have helped turn the former Gaelic footballer into the most exciting Irish 400-metre runner on a relatively healthy 400-metre scene. Indoors was always going to be a stepping-stone to the outdoors, and the transition was practically seamless.

"For two or three weeks in April I did feel very stressed," he admits. "A lot of people were ringing me up to do this or that, and I'm the sort of person that wants to do those things, and didn't want to let anyone down. I was working nine to five on the placement, and then trying to fit in the training in between everything else. I ended up rushing around like an idiot, and I wasn't being myself to my family and my girlfriend.

"It's only since Turin I've been able to concentrate solely on the running. I'll finish my last year of college definitely because I want to get the degree out of the way first, but I think if I really want to pursue my athletic dreams after that I'll have to go away, because we just don't have the facilities here. But it's nice to be doing the full-time athlete for a while, especially being able to get as much rest as I want."

But not much about Gillick's life has changed since Madrid. He purposely didn't go seeking an agent this year because the season took care of itself anyway. After the European Under-23 Championships in July he has the National Championships, and that's enough of a build-up for Helsinki. Yet he wants to go there with the A-standard of 45.55, which will mean breaking Paul McKee's Irish record of 45.58.

Unless he starts running under 45 seconds on a regular basis he's unlikely to ever make a living out of the sport. Madrid helped increase his training grant to €19,100 ("that's another story") and he's driving around in a 2005 car courtesy of Toyota, but he only has to glance around him to realise whatever life is left athletics is continually being squeezed out by other sports.

"We came back from the European Indoors with two gold medals, which is a major boost for Irish athletics. And yet Athletics Ireland did nothing with it, just let it fizzle out. That just amazed me.

"In any other sport I think it would have been promoted a lot more through sponsors or whatever. We just don't seem to market athletics. I would love to have gone into schools to talk to kids and promote the sport. I remember the Sam Maguire coming to my primary school, and that had a huge impact on me.

"I also had my first blood test ever on Monday, only because the Peak Centre in Sandyford have agreed to sponsor me. The NCTC send out a letter every year saying screening like that is compulsory, and that's the last we hear of it. And yet I was drug tested after running in Down last Friday. The sports science end is so important now, and I know all my competitors are using it. We got away with it 30 or 40 years ago but not anymore."

Being aware of that, and having the will to address it, is what could well set Gillick ever further apart in Irish athletics. The rest of his career can't get going fast enough.