Peter Coghlan will this evening have his first race since the Sydney Olympics when he competes indoors over the 60 metre hurdles at Virginia Tech University. Olympic year was a near washout due to injury and while Coghlan is now back to full training at his Atlanta base, he is not making any great predictions about the upcoming indoor season.

The main ambition is to get back into sort of shape that in 1999 saw him break the Irish 110 metre hurdles record four times, eventually lowering it to 13.30 seconds and ranking him the eighth fastest in Europe.

But he was a shadow of that athlete last season. Double surgery for a groin injury forced him out of action for most of the summer and although he did make it into the second round in Sydney, he never once approached his Irish record, clocking a season best of 13.86.

"Things are going quite well at the moment but I'm still not sure how committed I am to the indoor season," he says. "Ideally I would like to give the World Indoor Championships a go but I don't want to push too much too early. It will all depend on how it goes in these first few races.

"If I'm way off the mark then I'll just go back into training for the summer. I've always enjoyed indoors but last year I had everything mapped out and then everything went wrong." Coghlan is almost certain to return home for the National Indoor Championships in Nenagh on February 3rd/4th, with the ambition of making the Irish team for the world tests which take place in Lisbon on the second weekend in March.

Training with Coghlan in Atlanta under coach Loren Seagrave is 400 metre record holder Karen Shinkins. She will also have her first race of the season in Virginia this weekend and also has an eye on the Indoor Championships in Lisbon.