O’Rourke aims to get back on medal trail in Belfast opener

DERVAL O’ROURKE will follow the same path that took her to world indoor gold and European outdoor silver medals last year when she launches her indoor season at the Irish indoor championships at the Odyssey Arena in Belfast at the end of January.

Ireland’s star hurdler — the only Irish female athlete to win a world indoor title — blamed the fact that she had to miss the indoor season through injury for her loss of outdoor form this year and she does not intend to allow that to happen again — confirming yesterday that she will be in action in Belfast on January 26-27.

At the 2006 world indoor championships in Moscow, O’Rourke created a major upset when she won the 60m hurdles title. Over that weekend she broke the Irish record twice to defeat Olympic silver medallist Glory Alozie from Spain in 7.84 seconds.

Her win came as no surprise to those who saw her at the Odyssey Arena in February 2006 when she defeated the world silver medallist, Delloreen Ennis London of Jamaica, in a new Irish record time of 7.90 secs.

This year she has changed coaches — parting company with Jim Kilty who took her to her world indoor title and silver medal at the Europeans — and she is now coached by Matthew Arnold, who coached Colin Jackson and now coaches star sprinter, Craig Pickering based at Bath University.

Next year’s world indoor championships will be held in Valencia, March 7-9.

Other Irish internationals competing at the Odyssey include 800m runner Dave Campbell and Limerick 1,500m runner Liam Reale who are now based at DCU. Campbell, who competed at Osaka over 800m, recorded a double victory at 800m and 1500m in the Irish Championships last July.

Meanwhile, Robert Heffernan who finished sixth in the 20k walk at the world championships in Osaka makes a quick return to competitive race walking in Barcelona on Sunday when he will line up alongside several Olympic, world and European medallists to kick start his build-up to the Olympics.

Amongst them will be Olympic champion, Ivano Brunetti from Italy, and Heffernan’s erstwhile training partner and world silver medallist, Francisco Javier Fernandez.

“There are quite a number of medallists there all right and a lot of athletes from Osaka so it is a pretty packed field,” Heffernan said. “I am not quite in shape for a world class race of this type because I am only doing mileage and gym work at the moment.

“Having said that, I did a session of 200’s this week and that took me out of the comfort zone. It got my rhythm going so you’d never know.

“The race will get me across the threshold and I have a big block of training planned for December. I remember I went to a race like this in Grenada this time last year and I was pretty shattered afterwards. I slept in the car on the way back to the airport.”