Derval digs deep as coach backs her for final flourish
She has drawn what is by far the toughest of the three semi-finals alongside the world leader, Sally Pearson (Australia), LoLo Jones (USA) and Tiffany Porter (Great Britain), with the first two to go through to the final later in the night along with the two fastest losers.
Despite the strength of her semi-final, Sean insisted O’Rourke can get through after he had watched yesterday morning’s first round heats.
“Morning time not the perfect time for her,” he said.
“I’m really proud of her. This was the type of performance we’ve been looking for all year.
“We knew it was there. We only got to see half of it — first half good, second half wasn’t — but that will give her the confidence to kick on now.
“Her semi is quite tough but if she runs quick she will make the final and if she doesn’t she won’t. That’s exactly what I said to her.
“It’s really up to herself now and I know she can run quick. Today was quicker than her start in Berlin so everything’s in place.”
She hit form at precisely the right time to claim her place in the semi-finals as the fastest of the fastest losers after finishing fourth in her heat in 12.91. Inches from the line it appeared as if she might qualify automatically only to be beaten by the Russian, Ekaterina Galitskaya, 12.89, on the line.
She got the perfect start, met the first hurdle spot on and was disputing leading between the second and third. But her famous dip that has inspired hurdlers like Carolin Nytra, failed her this time.
“I’m satisfied, I’m not thrilled,” she said.
“It takes more than that to thrill me. I’m a bit disappointed I wasn’t top three because I should have been, I shouldn’t have let that Russian dip me. There was a little lapse in the middle of the race but there’s a lot more there.
“Good start, yeah, but the start’s been there all season. It’s the rest of it. The rest of it was a little bit better today but it can be much better. I know from training that there is a lot more there. We fight on tomorrow.
“Nice first hurdle and my first hurdle in warm-up was brutal and I think Sean [Cahill] wanted to kick me. Hopefully he’s relatively happy with that but I know he’ll tell me that I need to work much harder and there’s much more there.
“Things in the past few weeks in training have been very good. Ailis [McSweeney] has been amazing. She’s had a hard year herself but she did every single session with me, she did every single warm-up with me. She ran next to me when I was running and if I ran over three hurdles, she ran over three hurdles. If I ran over eight, she ran over eight.
“To get that kind of loyalty from someone when they’ve had a tough year was amazing, and it brought me on a ton. So I should be pretty thankful to her.”
Inevitably, the controversy that surrounded her boyfriend, sailor Peter O’Leary, a couple of weeks earlier, came up too.
“The funny thing about the Olympics is you come into the Olympics, and I’m well aware of what people are like, and some people start to act despicably, in the last couple of weeks and before it,” she said.
“For me, I’ve got such experience that I’m not going to leave people’s absolutely awful behaviour take me down. I know there’s so many people at home who want me to do well and I just concentrate on that.
“I ignore the people who just write in papers and can’t run to save their lives.
“Nothing has bothered me in the past three weeks. I’m out here and I’m coming back fighting. I’m very appreciative for the people who support me and you can’t buy loyalty.”
When Peter was mentioned she replied: “That’s irrelevant to my sprint hurdle,” and, as regards Kevin Ankrom’s concerns which were widely reported, she said she had not known about them until Paul Hession told her.
“If I started reading the more tabloidy-type pieces that are written I don’t think I’d get out of bed in the morning. That doesn’t bother me.
“I know how easy it is for someone to write a flyaway comment and for it to be written up differently. You have to remember I have a lot of experience and I’m well aware of how things work and — no offence — how the press works.”
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