O’Rourke to call it quits for the season
After finishing seventh in the Weltklasse, she was seventh again in the Herculis meet in 13.17 seconds.
Within 15 minutes of crossing the line, she was on the phone to her coach, Jim Kilty, to admit she has had enough.
“I am just drained mentally and physically,” she said.
“I did not realise Gothenburg would have taken so much out of me.”
She said she did not feel she was going to be able to pick herself up from this in time to be competitive in Brussels next Friday night and was trying to contact her agent, Andy Norman, who is and IAAF Delegate at the African championships.
“Subject to whatever contractual obligations there are, she will not be going to be travelling to Brussels,” Jim Kilty said.
“The plan right now is to join the other members of the group on a break and then resume training on September 26 when they begin preparations for the indoor season.
“She has had a hectic couple of weeks and she has achieved everything she wanted to achieve and more. I mean a silver medal at the European championships was a terrific achievement after all that she had gone through.
“She was injured and that delayed her start to the season and I think the fact that she missed six or seven weeks is now taking its toll on her.
“She says she is physically and mentally drained but I already knew that. I knew it when we went out for a training session last Tuesday. We ended up just doing a few runs over hurdles.
“She complained of feeling flat in Zurich on Friday night and it is not like Derval to complain. But she has achieved her goal for the season and I think everyone is happy with that. It has been a great year with the gold medal at the world indoor championships and then silver at the European outdoor championships. It is a tremendous achievement.”
David Gillick rediscovered his form to relaunch his season with a sizzling 46.4 victory — 7 seconds ahead of his nearest rival — in atrocious weather conditions in Chaux de Frongs, Switzerland, on Sunday before travelling on to Malmo for tonight’s meeting.
After a disappointing performance in his semi-final of the men’s 400m at the European championships in Gothenburg, the reigning indoor champion put a lot of his frustrations behind him in the 4 x 400m relay running spectacular legs in both the semi-finals and final.
“I timed him just under 45 seconds in the final,” his Coach, Jim Kidd, said. “It would be true to say he got rid of a lot of frustration in that run and that was good for him.
“I am still convinced there is a really big run in him and, on account of that, Gothenburg would not have been the way to end his season.
“We sent him to Switzerland at the weekend because it is a relatively good track, 1,000m up and Paul McKee had a good run there last year. But the weather was appalling — heavy rain and gale force wind — so he was very happy with his run under the circumstances.”
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