Irish walker Gillian O'Sullivan, the holder of every Irish women's walk record, has released a statement relaying her disappointment in pulling out of her second Olympic Games.

The coach of injured Irish walker Jamie Costin, Pierce O’Callaghan, has described today as a “devastating day” for Irish athletics.

Gillian O’Sullivan, the Irish 20km race walker and one of our strongest medal hopes, has pulled out of the Olympics in Athens.

MEDALS are not awarded for effort in the tough world of race walking but if they were then Gillian O’Sullivan would surely have strode away with gold after yesterday’s World Cup event in Naumburg.

ALTHOUGH efforts to get the issue on the agenda failed, athletics unity and the prospect of one licence for all of Ireland will be mentioned at the second annual Congress of Athletics Ireland this weekend in Donegal.

ATHLETICS Ireland has announced their biggest ever team for the IAAF World Cup of Race Walking in Naumburg, Germany on May 1-2.

THE Olympic Council of Ireland will stand firm on the standards and quotas for next year’s Olympic Games in Athens — which means that only A standards will be accepted in the case of athletics and swimming — as well as on the final date for achieving those standards, set as June 30 next year.

GILLIAN O’SULLIVAN’S silver medal in the 20k walk at the world championships in Paris and Paul Hession’s silver medal in the sprints at the World Student Games in Korea over the past week means Ireland has claimed a medal from all the track and field championships this year.

THE women’s 20k walk will surely prove to be one of the highlights of this world championships in Paris.

GARETH TURNBULL claimed the 1,500m berth at the world championships in a spectacular if not sensational final at the Woodies DIY national track and field championships at Morton Stadium yesterday where the Belfast man outfoxed and outsprinted James Nolan in a flying finish to win in 3:40.32.

THE QUESTION was innocent enough but the conversation that unravelled from it would have been depressingly familiar had Gillian O’Sullivan been listening.

EVEN in summer the road from Perpignan and the Med to the snowless, out of season ski resort of Font Romeu ranks as a long, hard slog.

PATRICK JOHNSON, whose father emigrated to Australia from Carlow in 1952 has become the first athlete from his country to break 10 seconds for 100m.

MARK CARROLL, laid low with an injury sustained while training at altitude for the Boston Marathon, will miss this year’s track season — including the world championships in Paris — with a planned return to competitive athletics in another marathon a the end of the year.

IT’S rare for an Irish sportsperson or team to set a new world record.

SONIA O'SULLIVAN'S participation in the world cross-country championships in Lausanne at the end of March could be in jeopardy after she withdrew from a weekend engagement in Japan.

ROBERT HEFFERNAN will miss the 20th IAAF World Cup for racewalking in Turin in two weeks time on account of injury. The Togher athlete is nursing a knee injury.

Gillian O'Sullivan has just missed out on a medal at the 18th European Championships in Munich this morning.

SONIA O'SULLIVAN will round off her preparations for next week's European championships with a training session this evening in London and, after that, it will be just a matter of tapering off.

Russia's Olimpiada Ivanova led from the start to win the 20km walk in a new championship record.