Knee injury setback for hammer hopeful O’Keeffe

EILEEN O’KEEFFE has suffered a setback that could affect her performance if not her participation in the qualification rounds of the women’s hammer on Monday.

She arrived at the training camp in Matsue recuperating from a knee injury that had caused her to withdraw from the Morton Meeting in Dublin a week earlier.

And, while she had been training and throwing quite well under the supervision of Dave Fagan over the previous week, she complained of discomfort in her knee when she arrived in Beijing on Thursday night.

“She had what would appear to be just a slight setback while training in Matsue prior to her departure for Beijing,” Team Manager, Patsy McGonagle, confirmed. “She complained of discomfort in her knee when she arrived here last night and we are treating it at the moment.

“It is a setback and we are monitoring the situation carefully. On the positive side she had a good work-out in the gym this morning and that was very encouraging. At this stage I cannot say how serious it is but the fact that she does not compete until Monday gives us a bit of a window and three days to work on it.’’

Derval O’Rourke has also been in rehab since the week after she retained her 100m hurdles title the national championships. She tore a muscle in her groin the Tuesday after the championships and missed a lot of training.

The European silver medallist and former world indoor 60m hurdles champion was just getting back on track when the injury forced her to pull out of crucial meetings in London and Monaco where she planned to put the finishing touches to her Olympic preparations.

She arrived in from Matsue on Thursday night after having just a few full training sessions under coach Sean Cahill. She competes in the first round heats of the 100m hurdles tomorrow 1.14pm (Irish time) with the semi-finals scheduled for Monday at 1.40pm (Irish time).

Joanne Cuddihy also arrived in Beijing after spending much of her time in rehab at Matsue. Her build-up to the Olympic Games has been little short of disastrous – a recurrence of an old back injury, then a knee injury and then a calf muscle strain. She competes in the first round of the women’s 400m today with the semi-finals tomorrow.

“We are just thankful Joanne is here at all because she has really been put through the mill,” McGonagle said. “It was only midweek when she came through a paced 300m trial that she got the all clear to compete.”

He dismissed suggestions that Matsue was not the ideal place for a training camp in advance of the Olympic Games.

“From our point of view it was the perfect location,” he said. “We had all the facilities we needed, we were made very welcome there and the fact that we were there before last year’s world championships in Osaka meant that we were back in familiar surroundings. There are 17 teams there from Europe and Australia.”