O’Sullivan not worried as back injury blamed for race retiral

IRISH Olympic medal hopeful Gillian O’Sullivan is unconcerned by the injury which forced her to abandon the Grand Prix walking race in La Coruna on Sunday.

The world silver medalist stressed that the problem will have no impact on her preparations for the 20km final at the Greek Games in Athens on August 23.

The Kerry native withdrew after 5km when she picked up a second yellow card. She blamed the infringement on a tightness in her lower back which is affecting her technique.

“It is nothing serious but it is frustrating and I need to have it seen to sooner rather than later,” she said yesterday adding that it has proved troublesome for the past number of weeks

“I suppose the fact that I don’t have any pain means that I have persevered with it although it is affecting my technique and I cannot stride out as much with my left leg. If there was pain there I would probably have seen to it a long time ago, but I think now is the time to have something done about it.

“You see it is not an injury as such. It just needs to be monitored and I need to get some work done on it. But it is frustrating at times.”

With the majority of her preparatory work completed, O’Sullivan is in confident mood.

“From here on in, it is more or less a matter of putting the finishing touches to it and perfecting what I have done,” she said. “I have had a fabulous winter’s training and everything else has gone according to plan.”

She will compete again next weekend over 10k in Krakow where the double Olympic champion, Robert Korzeniowski, will promote his own racewalking meeting.

After that she will compete in the Dublin grand prix in the Phoenix Park on June 27, her final race before the Olympics.

Robert Heffernan, who was marginally outside his national record when finishing fifth in La Coruna on Saturday in 1:20.55 will be back in action in Krakow at the weekend as well when Olive Loughnane and Jamie Costin also travel as guests of Korzeniowski.