O’Sullivan ready to run her fastest

SONIA O’SULLIVAN is prepared to run faster than ever in her quest for a medal at the world championships in Paris today.

And, all the indications are that she will have to do just that if she hopes to leave is not go leave the Stade de France with a medal.

It is difficult to envisage her winning the gold as she faces at least six of the world’s top 5,000m runners in what promises to be an intriguing final. But her confidence for her biggest assignment since last year’s European championships is so high she must be a serious medal contender.

Her lead up to the championships has not been satisfactory.

A pre-season Achilles tendon injury led to a delayed start but her recent form indicates she may be peaking at the right time and when some of the other big names are feeling the effects of the gruelling Grand Prix circuit.

O’Sullivan has most to fear from Ethiopia’s Berhane Adere, who won the 10,000m title last Saturday and equalled the second fastest time ever when running 14:29.32 in Oslo in June.

In Tuesday night’s first round O’Sullivan flashed past the African record holder in the finishing straight but yesterday, Nic Bideau, her partner, pointed out she was probably still recovering from that classic 10,000m final.

Edith Masai poses the biggest threat to Adere’s double hopes.

The Kenyan was 34 when she launched herself on to the world stage in 2001. She took up running to provide for herself and her son when she separated from her husband in 1999 and she made an early impression by winning the short course race at the world cross-country championships in Ostend in 2001, retained the title in Dublin and again this year in Lausanne.

En route to those championships she had Grand Prix wins in Stockholm and London, where she beat Gabriela Szabo impressively with O’Sullivan sixth, and she leads the qualifiers into the final after winning her heat in 14:45.35 on Tuesday night.

The second-placed finisher in that heat was Adere’s team-mate Tirunesh Dibaba, winner of this year’s world junior cross-country championships.

O’Sullivan could find herself involved in a dust up for the bronze medal with Dibaba, China’s Yingjie Sun and her old adversary Gabriela Szabo, although the Romanian was far from impressive on Tuesday when she qualified from O’Sullivan’s heat as a fastest loser.

The winner of that heat, Elvan Abeylegesse, who was born in Ethiopia where she was known as Hewan Abeye but now runs for Turkey, could a surprise packet.

Since moving to Turkey she has won a couple of European junior titles and won the 5,000m at the recent European Under-23 championships.

It is difficult to see Yelena Zadorozhnaya, the Russian who finished third behind Marta Dominguez and O’Sullivan in the 5,000m at last year’s European championships, being a factor after going through two rounds of the 1,500m. But Dominguez looked impressive when she set a new personal record at 14:52.66 for fourth place in her heat.

O’Sullivan said: “It will certainly be a big chance to get out there and run the best I’ve ever run,” she said. “It is going to be a hard race.

“I would imagine it is going to be fast so I will just have to go out there and run as fast as I can.

“At some stage it relaxes and then it becomes a race and that is my strength but I need to be in the race. I am definitely fit right now and I feel really good.”

She said she would prefer a steady, even pace, pointing out that she ensured that when she went to the front in her heat.

“You stand a better chance of running fast than if they run slow early on and then run some fast laps in between. Sometimes the extremes hurt you more than running at a fast, even pace,” she said. “I definitely had speed on Tuesday so I know I can do the racing part.”

And this is where the Chinese, Yingjie Sun, could decide the race in O’Sullivan’s favour if she was to run the relentless, even laps she churned out in both the 10,000m final and the heats of the 5,000m.