Once more, we share Olympic dreams with Sonia
However, many of the old, familiar faces will be missing.
Gabriela Szabo, the diminutive Romanian who narrowly beat her for the gold medal in Sydney four year’s ago will not be there and neither will bronze medallist Gete Wami.
The new generation will arrive on the line in force represented by the likes of Tirunesh Dibaba, who at 18 years and 36 days, became the youngest ever winner of a world title in Paris last year. Edith Masai, the 37- year-old Kenyan who won a bronze in Paris, can give her a few years but she only took up running when her husband left her in 1999, so she has not been around for that many years.
The young Turk Elvan Abeylegesse who was born in Ethiopia, will go to the line as favourite after setting the new world record at 14:14.68.
To familiarise herself with the names, at least, Sonia O’Sullivan, downloaded the field for tonight’s final on Saturday morning and printed it out. After looking at it she insisted that, despite the impact the young generation have been exerting on women’s middle distance running in recent times, there is nobody in the final she cannot beat on her day.
“And I don’t believe it is going to be a very, very fast race,” she said. “It’s not going to be any faster than Sydney and if it does develop into a tactical race then it will suit me,” she says.
She did not rule out the possibility of a medal to add to the silver she won in Sydney four year’s ago pointing out that while it might appear that she was just happy to be in the final, she wants to be competitive.
“When I looked at the start list for the semi-final I picked out four girls who would finish ahead of me and they did,” she said. When that field split she was eventually left isolated but dug in and finished seventh just over two seconds behind Margaret Maury of France who set a new personal best at 14:56.79 but Sonia O’Sullivan’s 14:59.61 would have been good enough to win the first heat which was won by Dibaba in 15:00.66.
Dibaba will run faster tonight when she gets involved with Ethiopian team-mate, Meseret Defar who won O’Sullivan’s heat in 14:52.39 from Abeylegesse and Joanne Pavey of Britain with Isabelle Ochichi of Kenya fourth.
Abeylegesse, despite finishing second to Defar on Friday night, has to be the favourite if she can duplicate her world-record form but Dibaba, Defar, the Russian Yelena Zadorozhnaya, who appears to have put her health problems behind her and who ran 4:01 for 1,500m this year, Edith Masai and the front- running Chinese runner Yinjie Sun, can make life difficult for her.
Elvan Abeylegesse says the reason she went to Turkey was because she could not get enough support in Ethiopia where there is an abundance of middle and long distance women.
“I train now at high altitude in Turkey as I think some of my former compatriots see me as a threat,” she said. It is not the first time Ireland has turned to Sonia O’Sullivan to salvage something from the Olympic Games.
She wanted to make the final because of the fact that her parents and her two children would be in the Olympic stadium. A national treasure, people have celebrated with her and cried with her in the past. One can only imagine the reaction if she can snatch a medal tonight.
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