Walking tall before the eyes of the world

GILLIAN O’SULLIVAN will go into tomorrow’s 20k walk as Ireland’s leading hope of winning a medal at the World Championships in Paris.

Olive Loughnane is quite happy to let her claim the limelight. The athletes have trained together for most of their careers they were involved in the group that established itself in Cork, where Gillian worked as a teacher after graduating from UCC, and Olive still works in the CSO. Robert Heffernan from Togher is another world-class race walker.

But yesterday Loughnane insisted she was quite content to go into the race in the shadow of her training partner, confident that she will not be too far away and she never is.