O’Keeffe makes tame exit

LONG before yesterday’s qualification rounds of the women’s hammer in Beijing, there were doubts about Eileen O’Keeffe’s wellbeing, even about her participation.

She suffered a ruptured cartilage in her knee the week after the national championships but the knee had shown signs of wear and tear long before that.

The national championships had quelled fears about her Olympic participation when she turned in another stunning display, stepping Olympic preparations up a gear with a best of 72.75m — a performance reinforced with three other throws beyond the 70m target — 70.14, 72.02 and 72.17.

She appeared ready to build on her sixth placing in the world championships last year, but things went pear shaped after that — the knee injury a couple of days later and then a setback just two days before she arrived in Beijing for the biggest competition of her life.

Like Joanne Cuddihy (400m) and Derval O’Rourke (100m hurdles) before her, she made it to the circle yesterday but struggled against the odds.

Her first throw — 62.53m — was a pale shadow of last month’s form, her second was worse at 62.05m but she appeared to have got it right with 67.66m on her third visit to the circle, but it was too little, and way too late.

“You don’t overcome a ruptured cartilage that easily,” she said. “It happened only three weeks ago. I made the best of the situation and that’s all I can do.

“I tried to totally block it out today. I went as hard as I physically could and that was all I could do. It wasn’t going to be easy — there was always going to be a major challenge there for me. At the end of the day 69m made the final and I know I was well capable of that and that’s what makes it so disappointing.

“I feel a bit of pain now all right. I was going pretty okay in our training camp in Japan and then, just two days before I came out here to Beijing I got a little bit of a crunch in it so I knew I probably tore it a little bit further and that probably affected my confidence. It was very hard to focus on technique or things like that.

“We were contemplating re-injecting here in China. As a consequence of the last injection I got an awful lot of stiffness and I could barely bend my knee so I didn’t think it was the right option.

“I am not sure if it will require surgery. I’ll get it sorted out for next year.

“I worked hard to get here. I gave it my all. I know I could have done a lot better but that’s the way it is.”

She said she was not certain how the damage to her knee came about but said it could have been caused by the throwing circles.

“The year of throwing off rough circles did not help me,” she said. “Between both circles — between Dunboyne and Santry Stadium circles — the one fast circle that would cause the least friction was the one I couldn’t use. Next year I think I’ll go back home to Kilkenny and train off my own one.

“I can probably be at my peak in London in 2012, especially since I only got into a professional approach for the last year and a half.”

David Gillick’s Beijing dream was also shattered in the Bird’s Nest yesterday by a performance that he just could not explain. The 25-year-old Dubliner, who set a new national record at 45.12 just a few weeks earlier, trailed in fourth behind the defending champion Jeremy Wariner in 45.83 — his slowest time of the season.

It appeared as if he had drawn the perfect heat — third fastest behind Wariner and Cedric van Branteghem of Belgium, with automatic qualification for the top three.

And for the first 150 metres it appeared as if everything was going to script — a good start and a smooth pick-up — but suddenly he was struggling and when he reached the crown of the bend, it became painfully obvious that even his hallmark finishing kick down the home straight was not going to see him through to the semi-finals.

“I felt good but then I just didn’t have anything on the bend, you are kind of pushing and you are waiting for it to kick in,” he said.

“I felt I kind of got out well, turned the bend and then I just felt like I had nothing — I mean that’s my slowest time all season and right now I feel wrecked, tired, feel like I have run a 44 seconds there.

“Hindsight is a great thing but if the masses say they are all tired maybe there was an element but I am not going to stand here and say ‘yeah I am tired’ and make excuses,” he said.

“At the end of the day I hold my hands up. I ran crap and I’m out.”