THERE is no physical reason why Sonia O’Sullivan should not go to next year’s Olympic Games in Athens as a medal contender according to the world’s leading expert in long term player/athlete development.

IRELAND’S Olympic 5,000m silver medallist, Sonia O’Sullivan, goes head to head with Paula Radcliffe for today’s inaugural Great Manchester Run.

UNA ENGLISH emerged as Ireland’s leading athlete at the World Cross-country Championships staged in sun-soaked Lausanne over the weekend when she finished 16th in the short course race.

MARTIN McCARTHY (Leevale) put years of frustration behind him in a devastating last lap that earned him his first national senior cross-country championship title at historic and picturesque Avondale where Anne Keenan-Buckley (North Laois) retained her women’s title in style.

ATHLETICS Ireland moved a step closer to lodging a bid for the European cross-country championships when a three-man delegation met with representatives of the EAA in Germany last week.

JEFF SCOTT, who is married to Carrignavar athlete Michelle Murphy, is a regular Yuletide visitor to Cork and yesterday he highlighted his visit with an all-the-way victory in the Belgooly Festive Four Mile Road Race while another visitor, Canadian international Sarah Dupre, married to Leevale athlete, David Healy, reclaimed the women’s title.

PHIL ENGLISH, winner of the highest accolade ever awarded to an Irish athletics coach working in the USA, will return home next week with 23 American High School cross-country athletes from Washington State.

SÉAMUS POWER has dominated the national inter-counties cross-country chapionships for the past seven years, and there is nothing to indicate that he will not win a record eighth title at Donoughmore, Co Cork, tomorrow.

THE stamina of the world class racewalker was underscored at Inchigeela yesterday when Robert Heffernan turned in a power-packed display of front running to win the Cork senior cross-country championship title.

VALERIE VAUGHAN (Blarney/Inniscarra) got the victory she had always wanted when she finished clear of defending champion Anne Keenan-Buckley (North Laois), to win the Evening Echo Cork Women’s Mini-Marathon yesterday, when she defied the tight corners and series of energy-sapping climbs that punctuated the new course to cover the five miles in 27 minutes 45 seconds, and that was just nine seconds clear of the runner-up.

VALERIE VAUGHAN (Blarney/Inniscarra) is hoping to fulfil a lifetime ambition when she lines up for the Evening Echo Cork Ladies Mini Marathon on Sunday.

AFTER her fine run in Hyde Park last weekend — missing the world record for 5k on the road by a mere two seconds — Sonia O’Sullivan is set for a quick follow-up in the BUPA Great South Run in Portsmouth on Sunday.

WITH national champion and record-holder Paul McKee and runner-up Rob Daly opting for the 200m, bronze medallist Antoine Burke will carry Irish hopes in a star-studded 400m at the Dublin International Games tonight.

The long-running saga surrounding a replacement for Rosemary Ryan on the Irish women's team for this weekend's World Cross-Country Championships has come to an end.