Athletics: Ian O'Riordan has taken the posters from his bedroom wall but still holds high hopes for 2008.

It's hard to believe and harder to admit that it's now 20 years since I had a poster of Ben Johnson in my bedroom - signed and all. It was 1987 and the year Ben the Bullet won the World Championship 100m in a world record 9.83 seconds. Johnson was my first athletics idol and my last.

The following year my Inter Cert essay was based on the state of sprinting, and Johnson's quest to break the world record - asking a question: How fast can a man run? A week or so into the new term Johnson ran 9.79 to win the Olympic 100 metres in Seoul, then tested positive for steroids.

When it came to writing my Leaving Cert essay I had only one topic prepared: how Johnson had destroyed athletics. It seemed that period of athletics innocence was lost forever, and maybe it was.

Yet every year I find my faith in the sport renewed, and 2007 was no exception.

Then - as if on cue - all the truth about Marion Jones added up to one big lie. Not that anyone really believed in her, or did they? Did kids have posters of Jones on their bedroom walls, and will they ever recover from the loss of innocence? Aren't all the best athletes still on drugs? All I ever say to that question is, "I don't know" - but I know who I think are on drugs, and they're certainly a lot fewer than those I think are not on drugs.

What is certain is that athletics is back in the crescendo phase of its four-year cycle, and in Beijing next August it will be the single most important sport in the world. Athletics needs a good Olympics and a good Olympics needs athletics.

Clearly some people just don't believe in athletics any more, and they're no longer the minority. It's understandable. There were some 2,000 athletes in Osaka from 200 countries, and not as much as one failed a drugs test - a fact I have a hard time believing in.

Truth also is you can't watch the likes of Paul Hession and David Gillick and Joanne Cuddihy and not have a lot of faith in athletics. You can't listen to Eileen O'Keeffe without realising it's not all about fame and fortune. You can't sit through a race like this year's New York marathon and think athletics is not the purest of sports.

(And if you're asking, no, I don't think any of those Irish athletes that made headlines this year are on drugs.)

What is just as certain is that the face of Irish athletics has changed, possibly forever, at least in the eyes of those of us formerly immune to the attractions of any track race 400 metres or less and even more immune to the esoteric charms of the field events.

In a country where skinny distance runners once grew on trees (or at least foreign trees) there was always a slight suspicion about sprinters, who somehow just didn't feel as real, or at least as good.

Things have changed. This year Paul Hession lowered the Irish 100-metre record from 10.35 to 10.18, the 200-metre record from 20.54 to 20.30, taking them from the slightly embarrassing category to the very respectable category. He also made the final of the European Indoor 60 metres and the semi-final of the World Championship 200 metres.

Hession is without doubt the fastest man in Ireland, ever. Put him in a race with Brian O'Driscoll or Denis Hickie and he'd destroy them. And at 24 he's possibly some way off his peak. Of course there's no guarantee he'll run any faster, but unlike so many sprinters, Hession is not just a talent from the neck down. He also has the head for big-time competition and the crucial knack of getting the best out of himself. He can establish himself as one of the best sprinters in Europe, ideally in time for the 2010 European Championships in Barcelona.

David Gillick, also just 24, has already established himself as the best indoor 400-metre runner in Europe. You don't win back-to-back European titles by accident. His victory in Birmingham back in March - in a national record of 45.52 seconds - was voted the Irish performance of the year by the national athletics media.

Joanne Cuddihy also took women's 400-metre running into new territory this year - running 50.73 at the World Championships, just short of a place in the final.

At 23, Cuddihy also personifies all that is good about the new breed of Irish athlete: smart, articulate and determined to represent Ireland with honour.

Imagine, too, if you're Eileen O'Keeffe, ploughing that lonely furrow of women's hammer throwing. O'Keeffe didn't go looking for that event. It found her, in the form of a training video at the local pound shop.

Right now she's among the best women throwers in the world, as her sixth-place finish in Osaka proved. When the push for our medal hopes in Beijing came to shove, O'Keeffe is our best contender.

Robert Heffernan won't be far off a medal in Beijing, provided he stays injury free and on the right side of the cruel and unusual rules of race walking.

Heffernan also finished sixth at the World Championships and finally convinced me that race walking was a serious event.

By now I should have mentioned Alistair Cragg, but he's in danger of disappearing from the radar as quickly as he arrived on it. I still believe Cragg is among the most talented distance runners ever to wear an Irish vest, but it's up to himself to regenerate the hype. Beijing may, ultimately, make or break him.

Still our distance-running tradition wasn't a complete write-off in 2007. Our women's 3,000-metre steeplechasers Róisín McGettigan and Fionnuala Britton made impressive strides, both making the World championship final, and Britton also proved her prowess on the country with an excellent 14th place at the World Cross Country in Kenya back in March.

This time last year only a fool would have said Derval O'Rourke would be the last Irish athlete to get a mention in the 2007 review of the year, but she is. Injury appeared to fuel the doubts and eventually she was left empty-handed, and for her, the year ahead has "comeback" written all over it.

Finally, now I have more or less regained my respect for sprinting, the obvious candidates for athlete of the year would appear to be Tyson Gay or Asafa Powell or even Allyson Felix, but the distance runner in me won't be denied that easily.

My entirely biased choice for 2007 athlete of the year: Haile Gebrselassie, yet again, for his marathon world record (2:04:26).

What we already knew . . .

That medals don't come easy at the World Championships, that Marion Jones was a liar, and that Haile Gebrselassie isn't done yet.

What we learned . . .

That winning back a European Indoor title is sweeter than winning it first time, that white (Irish) men can sprint, but that the world's best sprinter is Gay.

What might happen . . .

Beijing will be a great Olympics, someone will still test positive, and that Ireland will return without a medal but with more finalists than ever before.