Sonia winds down Euro training

SONIA O'SULLIVAN will round off her preparations for next week's European championships with a training session this evening in London and, after that, it will be just a matter of tapering off.

She dismissed reports that she might be having another race before Munich, insisting that her next race will be the final of the 10,000m next Tuesday night when she will defend the first of the two titles she won in Budapest four years ago.

The big challenger and firm favourite for that particular event will be the newly-crowned Commonwealth 5,000m champion, Paula Radcliffe.

Two weeks ago Radcliffe said she would compete only in this event but the British selectors have named her for both the 5,000m and 10,000m. This would appear to be a pretty tough assignment on the back of her Commonwealth Games race on Sunday evening but there is always the possibility that the 5,000m, too, will be run as a final.

"From my point of view training has been going very well and I have had absolutely no problems," Sonia O'Sullivan insisted last evening. "I will have a training session tomorrow night and that will be it. I am looking forward to Munich now."

And there was good news for the Irish team management with the announcement that James Nolan will definitely line up for the heats of the men's 1,500m.

"We were obviously delighted with the news," international secretary, Liam Hennessy, said. "OK, maybe he has not been in the best shape of his life recently but I think it would be a shame if he had to miss out on a major championship at this stage in his career.

"He missed quite a bit of training with that injury but he is over all that now and I feel he could well be well on the way back. The fact that there is absolutely no pressure on him going out to Munich should also mean a lot."

And there was good news from Salzburg where Mark Carroll is at a training camp with race walkers Robert Heffernan, Gillian O'Sullivan and Jamie Costin in preparation for their event.

"He is going extremely well and very happy with the training," Br John Dooley said yesterday. "He is improving every day and really looking forward to the championships."

The Corkman was a bronze medallist in the 5,000m in Budapest a remarkable achievement that was somewhat overshadowed by Sonia O'Sullivan's historic double.

He had aimed all his training for that event this year but things went horribly wrong for him when he was forced to undergo surgery on a damaged knee in late December and he did not get back into full training for a couple of months.

He had been chasing a qualifying standard this year but when he missed a flight connection to Belgium the weekend before last the selectors picked him on foot of his 13:08 the second fastest time in Europe last year and he has been concentrating on his preparations ever since.

He decided to go to Salzburg where Gillian O'Sullivan and Robert Heffernan trained prior to their record breaking performances at the national championships.

The AAI have decided to send junior and under-23 teams to meetings in Derby on August 11 and then Belgium and those squads will be named later this week.

"We felt that it was important to obtain worthwhile competition for junior and under-23 athletes at this time of the year, otherwise their season would be at an end," Liam Hennessy said.