Sonia retains 5,000m title and gets ready to take on the world

SONIA O’SULLIVAN raced to her 12th national senior track title when she retained her 5,000m title at the national track and field championships at Morton Stadium and declared herself ready for the world championships in Paris in just under two weeks time.

“I’m ready. I’ve done lots of training and I think the main thing is just to get a few races together to sharpen up,” she said.

She could hardly have been more impressive yesterday. She settled into a disappointingly small field ­ just five competitors ­ as Breda Dennehy-Willis took them around in 76-75 second laps with the first two kilometres just about even paced at 3:08 and 3:09.

But the Bandon athlete suffered again from the asthma that has plagued her throughout her career and when she drifted it was Marie Davenport (Marian AC, Ennis) who threw down the gauntlet in the form of two 72 second laps that really livened things up for the competitors.

Setting out on the last lap (69.86 secs, Sonia moved up and raced clear with 300m to go to win in 15:20.68 with Davenport second in 15:24.54.

“It was just what I needed,” Sonia insisted. “I had to come here and win the championship and it turned out to be a good, hard race.” She said the 5,000m will definitely be her event in Paris and she will put the finishing touches to her preparations in the 3,000m at the Golden League meeting in Zurich next Friday night when she will face a star-studded field.

“On Friday night in London I felt I was lacking a bit of concentration in those middle laps and when Marie took it up today ­ even though it was slightly slower ­ I still had to focus and concentrate.

“There is obviously something missing and I feel that it is probably some winter background. But I can’t change that so I have to forget about it, get on with what I’ve god and get the best out of myself.

“This time last year I was running similar times at the European championships and then I came out three weeks later and ran under 15 minutes. I would be looking for that again in Paris.

I just need to work on concentration and focusing on the race.”

She said she was happy with Friday night’s race when, after dropping off the pace, she stormed back to finish sixth in 15:06.19. “Going into the race I knew I was in shape to run 15 minutes or slightly under. They went out very fast and I knew that the pace would drop at some stage. Unfortunately it happened when I had fallen back a bit but I finished off really well and it did not kill me.”