Heats fiasco denies Sonia 5,000m warm-up
Following yesterday's decision to scrap the first round heats a decision that was contested vigorously by the Irish officials here as well as by the Spanish federation there was intense speculation that the newly crowned 10,000m champion would reverse her decision not to compete because she had not been officially withdrawn by the British team management.
It was a day of political intrigue around the Olympic Stadium, much of it fuelled by speculation surrounding Radcliffe, who set the championships alight with her 10,000m victory on Tuesday night and if she would attempt the double in the 5,000m a double completed successfully by O'Sulllivan four years ago in Budapest.
While television carried the news yesterday morning that Radcliffe had withdrawn from the race there were unsubstantiated claims that the heats of the 5,000m were dropped in a bid to keep championship's star performer in.
Those claims were later reinforced when Press Officer for the British Team, Emily Lewis, said the BBC comments earlier that morning had been misinterpreted. She said Radcliffe had not been withdrawn.
The Irish appeal had been turned down by the Jury of Appeal and, as soon as the result of the Spanish appeal was announced, Radcliffe would consider whether or not she would compete in the final.
But yesterday evening Radcliffe's husband Gary Lough said she would not be competing in the 5,000m and would return home to England today.
O'Sullivan made no secret of the fact she wanted heats in the 5,000m after collecting her silver medal from the 10,000m on Wednesday night.
Irish team manager Patsy McGonagle was furious with the manner in which the heats were dropped.
"At 11.03 this morning I picked up the corrected timetable just hot out of TIC and it indicated there was no 5,000m heats on the list, which would have been the normal thing," he said.
"I then went into overdrive, obviously, and started to tease it out, and from what I could discover the indications are that Fernanda Ribeiro pulled out leaving 24 athletes still remaining. Obviously the technical people of the EAA pulled the plug on the heats.
"I then went through a process of lodging an appeal. There were two things going on. There was the Paul Brizzel thing which I had protested on. Now there was the matter of the 5,000m and Sonia O'Sullivan's interests.
"We went all the way to the Jury of Appeal and we lost."
Like everyone else he felt if the heats of the 5,000m were dropped and the event run off as a straight final tomorrow Radcliffe would challenge O'Sullivan for this title also.
"This is a situation we had been watching for the last 24 hours, expecting something like this to happen to be quite honest, because there has been a lot of debate obviously about her main rival Paula Radcliffe," he said.
"Paula was never out as far as we can see. I have been hearing all those stories that she had withdrawn and was trying to get back in again and all that, but the fact is that her name is still on the list that I am looking at here. Ribeiro is the only name missing from the list which has been updated.
"There is a lot of debate about this. I can only go on the information I have been given, which is factual information, and that is what is in front of me at the moment.
"As team manager, I am only concerned about my own athlete and Sonia would have liked to have run a heat. She was prepared for a heat.
"An athlete prepares for a race and if, at 10 o'clock on the morning you are expecting to run heats and you find out at 11, at a serious championship like this that you are not running, it is not the greatest preparation."
He said the decision to dispense with the heats in the men's 5000m had been agreed at the Technical Meeting on Day 1 and other than one verbal reservation at that meeting, everybody walked out knowing the score.
"But there was a situation here where we feel there are other elements involved. The rule quite clearly states there is an upper limit of 19 athletes and we wanted this rule implemented."
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