Mark Carroll was entitled to indulge in his sense of achievement as he made his way back to base in Cork yesterday to celebrate a splendid win in the European 3,000 metres indoor championship at Ghent.

In the great carve-up of the ancient sport in the last 30 years, there hasn't been much cause for joy for European athletes in the middle and long distance events at Olympic and world level.

Now, more than ever, the Africans rule these distances in a manner which precludes serious argument. And in the flotsam of the lost, it hasn't always been easy for Europeans to preserve their self respect.

Carroll knows the feeling well. In a world which all too often has eyes and ears only for winners, few tend to hang around long enough to dwell on the tribulations of those who, for whatever reason, fail to make it.

Little more than six months ago, Carroll walked away from the World Championships in Seville with no obvious story to tell after finishing last in the 5,000 metres championship.

Had we stopped to listen, we might have discovered an athlete who had run himself into the ground in an attempt to build on the bronze medal won in the European Championships at Budapest a year earlier.

As one disappointment hardened into another, he attempted to work his way out of trouble with even bigger workloads in training. The result was that he unwittingly ran himself into a state of anaemia, a mere shell of the athlete who had performed so well in Hungary.

In the black despair of it all, he may well have been tempted to curse his decision to involve himself in such an unforgiving discipline. Instead, he went back to the US to rethink his whole approach to the challenge of presenting himself in prime condition for major championships.

Wearied by the burden of getting to the track with too much mileage in his legs, he turned to the 800 and 1,500 metres events to sharpen his speed. And the benefits were evident last Sunday as he came with that superb late run to out-kick one of the more devastating finishers in 1,500 metres competition, Rui Silva of Portugal.

Given the problems which have beset Carroll at regular intervals over the years, nobody could begrudge the 28-year-old Corkman his moments of ecstasy last Sunday. And now, new vistas are opening up as he savours the prospect of continuing his good form into the Olympic Games.

Soon, he will return to the US to devise a programme which, he hopes, will ensure he is a credible challenger for the 5,000 metres title in Sydney. In the meantime, he can reflect on a mission which thrilled those who witnessed it in Ghent's Flanders Stadium.

If Carroll's victory relegated everything else to secondary importance, it was, overall, a highly gratifying meeting for one of the most competitive athletics teams to leave these shores in recent years.

James Nolan, the new heir apparent to Ireland's 1,500 metres dynasty, performed quite superbly when, conceding plenty of experience to his rivals, he beat all but the Spaniard, Jose Redolat, in the final.

For a man just out of 800 metres competition, it was a remarkable achievement, and he will find himself in demand by international promoters in Europe in the grand prix season in the summer.

Further down the list, Karen Shinkins and Sinead Delahunty - one at the apron of a promising career, the other a skilled practitioner in the art of championship running - finished just out of the medals in fourth place. Add in personal bests for Ciara Sheehy and Gareth Turnbull and team manager Michael McKeon had every reason to be gratified by the way his charges performed.

Only Brendan Reilly could feel aggrieved, going out at 2.27 metres in the high jump after opting out at the earlier heights. That, in hindsight, was unwise but given his consistency over the last eight years who is to say that he, too, can't compete well in Sydney?

If the opening session of the Ghent meeting was at times quite chaotic with power failures and sundry difficulties taxing the patience of all but the most charitable, the consensus was that it was one of the better championships, with the bonus some significant Olympic pointers.

The women's 3,000 metres as expected was won by the accomplished Romanian Gabriela Szabo but not before a relatively unknown Polish athlete, Lidia Chojecka, had come out of the pack to throw down a big challenge over the last 200 metres. What Sonia O'Sullivan would have thought of it is anybody's guess but the underlying message is that the competitive element in women's middle distance running is becoming more pronounced by the year.