ATHLETICS: Another summer season gets off to a slow and unceremonious start with Sunday's AAI Games, set for the Ringsend track in Dublin. Though normally a reawakening exercise involving the shaking of muscles and testing of the lungs, David Gillick is using the event as a first and important step towards the European championships in Gothenburg in August.
There are two main reasons why Gillick is eager to get racing so soon. The Europeans are just 11 weeks away and the highlight of a short, generally low-key summer in athletics circles (with no World championships or Olympics). He's also anxious to get going again after the disappointment of the World Indoor championships in Moscow in March, where he gambled on competing in the 400 metres and ended being blown away in his heat.
"I just put that right behind me," says Gillick, "and wrote it down as an experience. The thing is, I never planned for Moscow, and never really intended to run. The training was going well, and the AAI were willing to send me, so I just figured I might as well go.
"In hindsight that was a mistake, but I know the reasons why I didn't run well out there, and I've addressed them all. And I learnt a lot from it. It was a major championship and I didn't plan it right, and that was my downfall."
The European Indoor champion from last year is even more determined to make an impact outdoors, having missed the best part of last summer with a back injury. He'll run the 200 metres on Sunday, looking to improve his best of 21.21 seconds, and from then on it's all about peaking for Gothenburg, and hopefully improving by some amount his 400-metre best of 45.93.
"The training has been going very well since Moscow. I've had no injuries or any setbacks at all, and my times in training are where they need to be. So I'm really looking forward to getting the outdoor season under way, especially as I did nothing indoors. I'm eager to get racing and get that competitive edge back."
Gillick's best of 45.93 already qualifies him for Gothenburg, and though still only 22, he feels he's ready to make a big jump on that.
"I don't want to put pressure on myself, and because I haven't raced in a while it could take me a while to get into the whole feel of it again. But it's not about times really. I just want to get back running well, and build from there. I feel that if I didn't get injured last summer I would have got down to mid-45s. So now I'm really looking forward to getting the season underway."
While Gillick is the only high-profile name set to compete in Ringsend, Alistair Cragg also starts his build-up for Gothenburg on Sunday when he runs over two miles at the Track Classic in Carson, California. After missing all of last summer with a back problem, Cragg still seeks the qualifying time over 5,000 metres, but that will surely come.
World Indoor 60-metre hurdles champion Derval O'Rourke is scheduled to open her outdoor season on Tuesday week in a grand prix in the Czech Republic.
