In the end the decision to run the 5,000 metres, with the 10,000 in reserve, may have come down to that for O'Sullivan. Her rivalry with Szabo has been intense and without affection or mutual respect. O'Sullivan has always fancied that Szabo is a weak championship runner who panics about tactics in races where there is no rabbit.

It hasn't gone unnoticed that practically all Szabo's best runs in the last couple of years have come in races where Ouaziz did the grunt work in turning up the heat. In Berlin in 1999 and 1998 and in Seville last year major 5,000 metres races followed that pattern.

Easy pieces. Szabo, the emergent dictator at the 5,000 distance, has looked a little creaky lately, suffering an unaccountable loss in Berlin just before the Games began. The little Transylvanian looked like a woman whose confidence is fleeing her.

This year in Berlin Ouaziz was absent (as she will be in Sydney) and Leah Malot, a virtually unknown Kenyan runner (who also won't be at the Games), took advantage. Malot out-kicked Szabo on the back bend. It was a respectable time, but the preceding pace had been quite slow and Malot admitted afterwards that she had felt fresh after a few 72-second laps.

So Szabo is dominant but not invincible. Ouaziz is out. The best Kenyans - Chepchumpa, Loroupe and Barsosio - are concentrating on other distances. Threats may come from Worku, the Ethiopian, and from Olga Yegorova, the Russian who appeared from nowhere to win the Stockholm meet last month. And, as Sonia noted last week: "I won't have to be keeping an eye out for my Chinese friends in the village". When Sonia O'Sullivan looks at the field she likes her chances a little more each day.

"I want to run the 5,000 like I am never going to run again. I want to be so tired I'll not be able to take Ciara for a walk afterwards."

The other day Bideau was on the Internet and he looked up and told her she was fifth favourite for gold. Eight to one. Good value, she thought, I'm good value for that.

She is. In the end, the six-month preamble to the Games has told us nothing. She goes to Sydney among the favourites, but among the most enigmatic of favourites.

From de Vinci in Milan to Runaway Bay on the Gold Coast, where she completed her last competitive run on Sunday, she has shown flashes of the old genius and the occasional glimpse of the bad old days.

There are a thousand theories about what happened at Atlanta. She hates to dwell on that time, yet no discussion of her Olympic career will ever be viable without reference to those disaster days. Anyone taking 8 to 1 on her will be having a think about it all.

She denies that her own anxieties cannibalised her.

"Not really. I've heard it said. Atlanta was what I said it was. I did too much. I got sick. I don't get especially nervous. I do get nervous, but it's a familiar feeling. Everybody has it. Everybody needs it."

Here's how it will go. She won't feel any edginess until the day before the first race when they hand out the heat sheets and give each runner the number they'll wear on their vest. "They give you your number the day before so you don't lose it. I get a bit nervous then. They give you the heat sheet too. Like exam results. I'll come out of the room and they'll have the list of all the other runners' names and the year each one was born in and their best time for this year and their best time ever. I always look at that list and I always notice the same two things. They all look really great on paper and I got the hardest heat."

After that it's just a countdown. Putting down time. "I don't get tetchy. I get less media friendly. I don't have time for the stupid questions. I come off after a heat or I'm going out to a heat and somebody says `Sonia, how do you feel?' How do I feel? What do they expect me to answer. I'm going to shout back that I feel dreadful? Nobody'll ever say how they feel if they feel bad. Talking to the press every athlete feels good. So that kind of thing annoys me."

Melbourne is possibly the most sportsmad city. Per capita attendance at sports events there is higher than anywhere else on the planet. It's the town where they reckon they could fill the MCG for a raffle. It's an odd but strangely, perfect place to train for the Sydney Olympics.

The town has been cold and at times windswept, but the Olympic excitement is elsewhere. In Melbourne the Olympics are a TV spectacular, the ardour cooled by the jealous breath of a rival city. Eyes are elsewhere. The Australian track team are off outside Brisbane stretching their golden limbs and the cameras are with them. Cathy Freeman is a few miles away in Melbourne with her share of followers.

Sonia O'Sullivan goes about her business in perfect anonymity. All is quiet and unfussed. Last week she went to the Melbourne Cricket Ground and got herself accredited without having to join the judgment day queues that attend the process in Sydney. Sandy Richards, the Jamaican 400 metres runner, has trained with her once or twice. Mostly, though, she just runs with Bideau.

Last Sunday she nipped across to the Gold Coast and ran an 800 metres race at Runaway Bay. Just a chance to blow the lingering cobwebs out of her legs. She had planned originally to run a 2,000, but couldn't see the advantage. She holds the world record at that distance and anything other than a personal best might cause her to goad herself. She opted for a race that she's come to see as four 200-metre finishing sprints instead. She'll be needing one of those soon, she says.

Her coach, Alan Storey, has been on the Gold Coast with the British Olympic team and she met with him last Sunday at Runaway Bay to talk and to put a little meat on the written instructions he had given her.

One thing she has noticed about these Games is the space. The feeling that not everything in Sydney will revolve around her. "Sometimes you can be too relaxed. Those days you'd be better off going for a training run. It's best to have some level of nervousness. I remember the European Championships in 1990, I remember being almost afraid beforehand. I've never had that since. Now it's more like a sense of anticipation, the excitement of knowing something is going to happen but not knowing what it is, but that I'll be part of it. I'm just going there thinking that if I see an opportunity I want to grab it and hang on till the end."

It's a time of good feelings and happy auguries. She's run in the stadium in Sydney a couple of times. That will be to the good. She feels good about knowing what to expect. Coming from the warm-up track to the main stadium and tunnel, she's been there, knows what's around every corner. "Those final minutes. That whole process can be really irritating. They make little announcements. "Women's 5,000 metres runners, 10 minutes."

"Women's 5,000 metres runners, five minutes."

Then somebody comes to round us up from the warm-up track and lead us into the stadium. The people who do the lead in, they walk soooooo slow, like it's a funeral.

"You walk past them to hurry it up and they call you back like you are a kid. Walk behind me. Single file please. People get annoyed. It's this slow walk through the tunnel. Sometimes we go into a holding room. Nobody says anything. Then you come out the other side and it's all very loud and you find you are irritated and unfocused. You have to get it back quick."

Intimations of her own mortality have been unavoidable this summer. She hasn't been hiding. This could be the last time. She'll enjoy it. She will fly down to Sydney on Friday, the day the Games open, and she intends for the first time to participate in the opening ceremony. It's a chance to see the stadium when it's full. It's a chance to be a bigger part of the Olympics then she has been.

At the National Championships last month in Santry, on an afternoon when without breaking sweat she won the 800 and 1,500 titles, the afternoon ended with a farewell. The Olympic track and field team were introduced one by one and together they did a lap of honour, a farewell before departure.

Sonia fetched her little daughter Ciara and carried her around the last 50 metres of curve, wreathed in smiles and cheers. Standing on the bank, the athletics people who have known her longest said it was a different Sonia, a Sonia they'd scarcely seen since she was a kid just up from Cobh.

Starting-line serious, but happy just the same.