Heffernan fit and focused on his toughest test
Korzeniowski has retired since retaining his Olympic 50k title in Athens — a title which he won as part of a spectacular double four years earlier in Sydney.
Since before Athens, he has been coaching Irish racewalkers Jamie Costin and Robert Heffernan. Costin was driving his car in Greece when he was involved in that horrific accident on the eve of the Olympic Games.
Poland’s most decorated athlete, Korzeniowski spent some time in West Waterford with Costin, helping with farm work during a break and walking in road races while in Ireland.
He coaches both Robert Heffernan and former world record holder, Francisco “Paco” Fernandez, who train together.
In fact “Paco” was with the Corkman at the Irish training camp in Matsue last week and it was Irish team manager, Patsy McGonagle, who arranged for Korzeniowski to get into the Athletes’ Village today.
“Robert is in super form and we are hoping for a really good performance,” McGonagle said. “He is the ultimate professional and leaves nothing to chance. We would not like to start talking about medals or anything like that but I think we are guaranteed a really good performance. He finished sixth in the world championships in Osaka and to repeat that would be sensational.”
Heffernan finished 26th on his Olympic debut in Sydney eight years ago.
But, since then, he has been in sparkling form. He broke through the 80-minute barrier with 1:19:22 for 9th place in the World Cup in Cheboksary on May 10, when 10 of the top 20 times in the world this year were set.
Eight of those ahead of him in the world rankings are Russians and of those, only the world leader, Sergey Morozov (1:16:43), Valeriy Borchin (1:17:55), the European under-23 champion, and Ilya Markov (1:19:04), silver medallist in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, are here.
Of those here, Fernandez, the silver medallist in Athens four years ago, is third ranked on the list with his winning time of 1:18.85 from Cherboksary.
Heffernan, who has been training with Fernandez, knows exactly what the pace will be like and he comes here on the back of his best time for 10k, which he set at the national championships a month ago.
The 30-year-old Togher athlete admits now is the time to produce.
“It is all about pace judgement — about knowing the pace that you can sustain in conditions that can be quite alien,” he said. “But I have prepared well.”
He said his 10,000m record on the track at the national championships — his third national record this year — was the perfect boost ahead of Beijing.
“I said at the start of the year that I had to get my times for 5k and 10k down. I did an Irish record over 5k in Belfast and then over 10k so I have the speed you need to go with the leaders.”
When he broke the 20k record in Russia he was not expecting anything spectacular, having suffered a double setback in the form of a haemoglobin problem while training at altitude in South Africa and then picking up a hamstring injury in a race in Spain.
“To be brutally honest, I did not want to go to the meeting at all but Robert (Korzeniowski) insisted I go and use the event as part of my training,” he said.
Getting to the start line at all for tomorrow morning’s heats has been a major achievement for 400m record holder, Joanne Cuddihy, whose season has been all but wiped out by a recurring back injury, a knee injury and then a calf muscle injury.
Roisin McGettigan looks the more likely of Ireland’s two competitors in the 3,000m steeplechase to get through today’s heats, with Fionnuala Britton still looking for the form that got her to the final at the world championships in Osaka last year.
McGettigan, a member of Ray Treacy’s elite women’s group of middle distance runners in Providence, finished 10th in Osaka and showed that she has at least retained that form when she beat a world class field in London a few weeks ago.
Alistair Cragg is going to have to produce something really special if he is to get past today’s first round heats of the men’s 1,500m.
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