Big Apple swoons over Sonia

A BITTERLY cold wind swept across Manhattan's Central Park yesterday but inside the Tavern on the Green it was blatantly obvious New York had warmed to Sonia O'Sullivan as the assembled media swarmed around her like bees to honey.

Everybody who was anybody appeared to be there including the chairman of the boards Eamonn Coghlan, who wooed the masses in Madison Square Garden over the years. Many of the contenders for Sunday's marathon were also in attendance but paled into insignificance as the greening of the New York marathon gathered momentum.

Observers were primarily interested in Sonia O'Sullivan and Mark Carroll. Once the formalities of the early morning press conference were dispensed with and press chief Richard Finn announced all the competitors would be available for table interviews it was clear only two tables mattered and O'Sullivan's was undoubtedly the top table.

She might be 5/1 with local bookies who have installed Lornah Kipligat at even money favourite for the race, but it appeared as if everyone around the table wanted her to win on Sunday as they pressed to find out just how confident she was.

"I am really confident in that I know I have trained properly," she said coyly. "I have done all the work. It is just that there is a little bit of the unknown there for me so I can't put my hand up and say I am in the best shape of my life and I am going to win this race simply because there are so many other factors that come into play.

"It is a big challenge and now I know why there is such a big build up for the marathon. I some ways it feels like you are coming for a big championship race. It is like preparing for the Olympics or the world championships because you focus on one thing for such a long time.

"I could list a whole load of things. For instance I could talk just about the course. It is not the easiest there are so many things going on in just that alone - lots of bridges and little hills and turns. A lot of the other girls are quite experienced and some of them have been around it before so you can expect that they will be a little bit more confident than me.

"Over the years I would have done a lot of miles in training for 5,000m and 10,000m so the transition has not been difficult for me. People are not afraid of the distance any more. It is just how you are going to feel with three miles to go that matters but then you realise that most people are going to feel the same at that point anyway.

"You are thinking about things like drinks along the way. If you utilise them properly then they will be a big help, but when you have not done it before you don't really know what to expect. You are just hoping that you do the right thing. I am not scared of the race or the people in it but I respect both. If this was a 5k road race then I would be really confident that I would win it. Because there are so many unknown things in the marathon I have to take that into account and I have to expect things that I have never experienced before and, hopefully, I can cope with them."

O'Sullivan added: "New York, by its course profile alone, will rule out extravagant times. Brendan Foster insists that it's five minutes slower than Chicago while race director Allan Steinfeld says two minutes. Either way there is not the slimmest chance that Sunday's time will come anywhere near the world record set by Paula Radcliffe a couple of weeks ago."

She was waiting until her coach Alan Storey arrived in New York last night to decide on a strategy what to do if, for instance, Lornah Kipligat should decide to take it out really fast.

"I know what pace I can go. It is just how you react to what other people do that needs to be taken into consideration. I looked at the video of last year's race just last night and it looked so easy for Margaret Okayo. Lornah has run 2:22 and she ran really fast in the mini-marathon here so I would definitely expect them to be running fast."

While it might appear the case, this race is not just about O'Sullivan, and there are several athletes in the field with their sights on the first prize of a Pontiac Vibe and $80,000 to keep it on the road for the foreseeable future and most of them have that enviable edge experience.

"It is not until you are actually out there in the race and competing against the people around you and the course itself that you can finally decide what to do. But I don't have a time goal. The main thing is to be competitive and I know I should be able to keep up with most people. Then a winning time is always good. It does not matter what it is."

The marathon event holds no fear for O'Sullivan and she feels she will return to track running next season a better athlete, admitting that a lot of the myths about the event had been dispelled in recent years.

"I think people thought the marathon took so much out of you and took so much recovery that you could not run so much afterwards," she said. ¨Now there is a lot more information available to people the training is a lot different and you have massage and drinks that they take that help people to recover after a race and it is a lot more advanced now and it makes it a lot easier for your body to recover and get back into running gear."

Across the room, Mark Carroll was reflecting on this time last year when his career appeared to be in tatters and admitted that he was, at one time, considering life after athletics. Now all that has changed.

Surgery on his damaged knee in December left him racing back to fitness in time for the world cross-country championships in March, but it proved too much and while he competed in the European championships in Munich in August, he had already set this sights on the New York marathon.

"And I have to admit I have enjoyed every moment of my preparations," he said. "I am pretty confident that no matter what happens on Sunday I will be back a stronger and better athlete next year. This was the type of training I lacked in the past."