Gillian’s Olympic preparations start at walking pace

GILLIAN O’SULLIVAN returns home on Saturday with her silver medal from the women’s 20k walk at the World championships and is looking forward to a well earned holiday.

She arrives at Cork Airport at 4 pm with team mate, Olive Loughnane, who lives in Cork. "And it won't be a foreign holiday. I've had enough of travel for the time being," she said.

O'Sullivan has been to far flung destinations like Tijuana, where she won the opening Grand Prix of the season, as well as Spain, Italy and Russia, and she had a spell training at Font Romeu before finally returning to France for the world championships. "I just want a break at home," she added.

But it will be a short break according to her coach, Michael Lane, who himself competed at the European championships in Split back in 1990: "She will have a complete break for two weeks, then an active break and, after that, it will be back to full training and the build up to next year's Olympic Games," he said.

Having predicted she would win a medal here, he was full of praise for the way she fulfilled that forecast.

"She stuck to her own race and ignored all that was happening around her. Her technique was superb, but then she could not afford to take any chances. The judging out here has been strict. A quarter of the field were disqualified in the men's race the previous day and almost as many in her race," said the coach.

Yesterday they were all out to support Jamie Costin in the men's 50k. While the Waterford man was in touch for much of the race, he finally paid the price for the hectic pace set up front and retired after 30k.

The race was won by the double Olympic champion, Robert Korzenowski, who set a new world record at 3:36.03 in a race that saw 18 of the 19 finishers break four hours.

It was exciting from the outset as Chaohong Yu from China set the early pace that took himself, Korzeniowski, Andreas Erm from Germany and Aijars Fadejevs from Latvia, clear of the field.

Behind, the three Russians Denis Nizhegorodov, Grman Skurygin and Aleksey Voyevodin worked as a team, with Jamie Costin back in 31st position at the 10k mark.

By 20k (1:28:49) Korzeniowski and Erm were clear on their own with the Russians now closing up to within a couple of seconds of them.

In the end it was Skurygin who came through to take the silver medal with Erm hanging on for bronze. Korzeniowski was never going to let the gold slip from his grasp.

Skurygin won gold in Seville four years ago but lost it after an investigation by the Russian Federation resulted in a two-year ban for a positive test for human chorionic gonadotropin.

Jamie Costin, in an ever diminishing chasing group worked his way back up to 20th position by the 30k marker, but a kilometre later he was clearly distressed and wisely abandoned on a day when no fewer than 15 competitors were disqualified.