Sonia to give it her best for final

SONIA O’SULLIVAN has drawn the easier of tonight’s two 5,000m Olympic semi-finals, but the Sydney silver medallist must run her best race of the year to get through to Monday night’s final.

How fast she is going to have to run ­ the first five in each of the two semi-finals will go through along with the five fastest losers ­ could depend on how new world champion, Elvan Abeylegesse of Turkey, approaches the race.

The former Ethiopian set an astonishing new world mark of 14:24.68 for 5,000m in Bergen in June when the former world champion Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia was over six seconds behind her.

Abeylegesse ran a personal best of 14:54.95 to win her heat at the world championships in Paris last year but could only finish fifth in the final, but she has made an amazing improvement since then.

Current form would indicate that she is the raging hot favourite for the gold medal but O’Sullivan is content to take it one step at a time. She will be looking around for the likes of Isabella Ochichi of Kenya who ran her career best of 14:46.42 in Hengelo where Joanne Pavey was second in 14:55.04. She, too, goes tonight.

Her current form would appear to be quite good judging from her run in Zurich and since then she has had two good track sessions in Madrid ­ her two best sessions of the year according to Nic Bideau ­ and a very good session in London last weekend.

“The most important thing is to get to the final,” Sonia said. “In the past that was a formality. Something you tell everyone is that you’re not thinking about the final till you’re in it.

“Now I have no right or reason to expect to be in the final. I have to go and work so hard, especially based on the heats last year in Paris.”

Gone are the days when she reeled off victory after victory across the major meets in Europe. In fact her last major international victory on the track in Europe was in Budapest in 1998 when she notched up that unprecedented 5,000m/10,000m double at the European championships.

“Every race is different. If you have all the pieces eventually they’ll come together. At the moment It’s like Sophie making a jigsaw. Lots of pieces but no big picture. I need to get like Ciara making a jigsaw, need to put the pieces in the right order.”

And this is just the time for all that.

Tonight she will be looking for a solid and reassuring performance.

Her huge fan club, with some 6,000 cards wishing her well at the Olympic Village, will be looking for just that as well. While the new world record holder will want to have her say the pace of the race could also depend on how fast the first heat is run.