O’Rourke targeting medal finish in Osaka

DERVAL O’ROURKE has a time and a position for the world championships in Osaka written in her wardrobe since last year and, despite whatever setbacks she might have had in the meantime, it is still the target.

“I’ll have to go there and believe I can still do it,” she said yesterday, as she prepared to put the finishing touches to her preparations for what could be the most exciting assignment of her career.

She was joined in Dublin by European indoor 400m champion, David Gillick, for a send-off from their sponsor, SPAR Ireland, before they leave for Japan next week.

Twelve months ago she was world indoor 60m hurdles champion when she went to Gothenburg for the European championships but she was still a relatively unknown quantity as regards the 100m hurdles.

From a personal point of view her season had been marred by injury and when she arrived there she drew the short straw when it came to the distribution of lanes. She had a kit bag full of excuses.

But O’Rourke took everything in her stride. She knew she was going to have to run a new Irish record along the way if she was to get to the final. She did that to win a silver medal.

The old fire was in her eyes when she described how a poor run in Heusden had robbed her of a lane in the Grand Prix meeting in Stockholm on Tuesday night.

And there was the disaster in Finland, where she went three days after the crashing fall at the national championships 100m. She tore skin from her shoulder, side, elbows and knees.

“I nearly killed myself. It took my body six or seven days to recover. My body was in bits and the fracture I got last winter hurt again,” she said.

Heusden was something of a minor disaster. She hit the fourth hurdle, lost cadence, lost interest and was beaten for third place by Jenny Kallur and it cost her the lane in Stockholm.

All the time she kept returning to Lausanne and her 12.98 sec run as if it was a significant marker that she will take with her to Germany today for back to back meets tomorrow and Sunday.

“I went there last year with 12.92 secs and had a couple of 12.8s there. There is only a few hundredths of a second in the difference and I will be very happy if I can repeat that,” she said. “Jim (Kilty) will be with me again so it is all similar to last year.”

She admitted that she was not a big fan of the Grand Prix circuit. “I live in Lane 1 or Lane 8,” she said recalling how, in Lausanne, one agent joked she would not win because there were no shiny medals.

“They regard me as a championship runner and that is a good thing,” she said. “When we sit in the corner before a championship race the other athletes are looking at me.”

She predicted that 12.9 or 13 seconds could get her to a semi-final and after that 12.8 or 12.7 could get her to the final and then they were in her territory.

“I think a lot of people are tapering off right now,” she said. “They have had a long season with a lot of races and I can’t see them running any faster while I know that I can run faster.

“The championships are a clean slate. Nobody goes into the championships automatically guaranteed a medal. Look at Jeremy Wariner — he did not even get out of the blocks at the Grand Prix in Sheffield.”

She was looking back at Stockholm again where Wariner, the Olympic and world champion, ran the third fastest 400m of all time.

And David Gillick was looking forward to Osaka where he hopes to be lining up against Wariner, hopefully in the final.

“As a child you always wanted to be there — to run in front of 80,000 people and to run against the best in the world,” he said. “I just can’t say how much I am looking forward to it.”

He already had a taste of that at the Golden League meeting in Rome. Unfortunately he was given Lane 1 and was never going to have a chance of getting into contention.

“Lane 1 on a nine lane track was a disaster but I must admit I enjoyed every second of it,” he said. “It was my first time taking part in Golden League meeting and that is the Premier League of athletics. I want to compete against those athletes.”

He followed up with an exciting run in Heusden — a race he feels strongly he should have won.

“Since then I have been running pbs over 300m and 350m so I got a lot of confidence out of that race,” he said. “It was important after Heusden to go and put in a bit of training just to make sure that I have enough gas to get through the rounds in Osaka.”