SPORTS FEATURE:In an extract from her autobiography, co-written by Irish Timesjournalist Tom Humphries, Sonia O'Sullivan recalls how things quickly turned sour following her World Championship success in 1995

I TOOK the first day of 1995 off. A little treat, seeing that I had raced in Durham on New Year's Eve. Anyway, New Year's Day was a Sunday, which meant beginning the working year on a Monday morning. That seemed right and proper.

I worked away in London and back in Dublin and then in Cork for a week and a half, and took another day off to travel to Australia. I did a couple of sessions the day I arrived and felt tired; but I was back to half-decent shape by the weekend, and did 105 miles the following week, plus a couple of track sessions and a weights session. The first race of the year was a fairly easy 1,500 metres in Brisbane in early February. Two weeks later I ran another race over the same distance in Hobart.

It was all going swimmingly until the Australian Championships in early March. I ran 4:22 for the 1,500 metres in a heat on Friday night and felt awful. Next day I was a little better in the final, running 4:16. Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and grind it out.

I was back in London as the spring softened the English weather. Back to the happy rhythms of Teddington, the daily routine: leave the bed at eight, fall into a friendly pair of running shoes. Hit the roads for 20 minutes, just a jog to jerk the sleep from heavy eyes, 20 minutes or so. Then toast and coffee. I can't do anything in the morning without a run first. It's how a day begins.

Then I prepare for the track. The track is more than 20 minutes away but my thumb just can't help pressing down on that stopwatch. I don't need to time myself running to the track. But I do. Generally I get there in 23 minutes 13 seconds, give or take a second or two to negotiate a stray dog or a little old lady.

Eleven o'clock. The track: some company, some chat. Stretching and warming up and then the hard work. Some days a 2,000-metre run followed by a 1,000, followed by an 800, followed by a 600, followed by a 400, followed by a 200. Getting faster and more explosive all the time.

Other days, if I'm focusing on the 5,000 metres, well then it's a big session. Then I might get one of the Kenyan athletes I am training with to act as the rabbit, setting the pace and pulling me along for a while. It's lonely out there sometimes, pounding away towards perfection, chasing the rabbit.

Running. When I run I think about races, I imagine myself into a race situation. Sometimes I just think about the act of running itself, I break the running down into all its little component parts and just try to feel the mechanics of my stride. Sometimes I am distracted and think about the afternoon to come and all the things that need doing. And the best times are when my mind seems to be wiped clean of everything. I'm not thinking at all, just feeling. That's when time goes the quickest.

Back home, I like to take a freezing cold bath. I could put more ice in it but I reckon it is cold enough. They tell me this penance is good for the legs. Sometimes I will get a massage too if the calves or thighs are feeling a little tight. Then food.

My racing weight is 8 st 3lb (115lb, or 52kg) and doesn't vary much. Up a little in winter, down again now that it is springtime. I'll wander out for a coffee, eating a load of bananas along the way. Food is fuel really. I don't worry about it too much. When I was a girl back in Cobh, I grew tall when I was quite young and never carried much by way of weight. In school I was slightly long and gawky at a time when most girls would prefer to be a little smaller and curvier. I was never much of a dancing queen on the Cobh disco circuit; but I remember the odd visit with me bopping awkwardly with lethal elbows and my head and shoulders sticking out above the crowd.

A body like mine seemed to make best sense when I was running. I had all the usual bits and pieces yet they seemed configured for running. Running is when I am most comfortable in my skin.

I might have coffee and put in a couple of hours chatting with some other athletes. Teddington is like a mini Olympic village in that sense. Other days, if there is nobody around I will stay at home and read or talk to home on the phone. It all amounts to killing time between runs, really.

On a typical evening, at 6pm a bunch of us will gather at the gates to Bushy Park for a gentle evening jog. The others like to chat and laugh and run at talking pace, but even though I will chat I have to be competitive. I can remember some of those evening runs when there was no pressure on the amount of time or pace you were running. We were running along, reciting lines from the recently released video The Van, an adaptation of a Roddy Doyle book. Marcus, Frank, Paul Donovan and myself, all acting out the different characters and laughing so hard we could hardly walk, let alone run. One line I remember clearly had us in tears and at a standstill: ". . . a bleeding slut . . . what are ya?" Little did I know, these words would come back to haunt me in 1999.

These are the runs that brought relief to the daily grind, these were the runs that I looked forward to. I counted the miles in my diary; but the enjoyment was there, so the effort was minimal. This was the key to running a lot of miles; sometimes you have to back down and get the run done with as little effort as possible and be ready for the Big Session later in the week.

One afternoon I came down to Bushy Park on the bike and took a spin along the perimeter fence. I took note of all the milestones. Made the park into a track for myself, filled with little features which tell me how far I have gone and how quickly I should be going. So, one mile out is marked by a tree which stands by the cricket pitch and sticks out a little bit. You'd have to see it to know, really. Two miles, and you sail past a big tree before the bridge. Three miles? Well, a tree after a big creek marks the spot. Loop around and the four-mile mark is three small trees standing in the company of one big tree. Five miles is a special landmark: two tall trees facing each other so that in your mind you are running through a winning tape. I like that one. The six-mile spot is just at the entrance to another cricket field. Seven is back at the gate, and then home.

Because I have everything mapped out in my head we always have to run in the same direction. I don't like going the other way around. I can't go fast if I'm not going past my markers. Once we are settled and off, we go at talking speed and sometimes a bit faster. It's strange. We pass people and they are going as fast as they can run and we sail past, chatting away. We were all put together for this stuff.

Finally home again. Hundreds of sit-ups in front of the television. High knees and hops and bounds, and maybe some fast strides out on the grass. That's a working day.

THEN ITstarts, the track hopping. Moscow. Tallinn. Cork. Gateshead. Dublin. Nice. Oslo. Crystal Palace, and so on. The road to Gothenburg and the World Championships.

I love this part of the year. Racing. Racing. Racing, and racing some more. You run races as part of your training. You just maintain the level of fitness which you ground out before in the springtime. Every race tells you a story about where you are. A modest 1,500 metres (4:22) in Moscow in early June to an Irish record (3:58.8) in Monaco in late July.

The summer unravels like a game of cat and mouse. All the top runners watching one another, seeing who is going well, trying to work out which races they will enter in Gothenburg, trying to get a little psychological edge. I am hovering between the 1,500 metres or the 5,000 metres, eyeing the others, knowing they are eyeing me.

We play games. Who can tough one another out. I am going well at 5,000 metres, for instance. In June I do a lot of track work. In mid-June I do a session at the track with the help of Paul Donovan. He is in London, earning some money pacing races, enjoying a session at the Wimbledon track with me. 5 x 1,000-metre runs with two minutes between each run. The times are 2:48 . . . 2:49 . . . 2:50 . . . 2:51 . . . 2:53. Three weeks later at the beginning of July it pays off.

We are to race on a Friday night at Crystal Palace, Fernanda Ribeiro of Portugal and me. Provided the Chinese don't materialise out of thin air, the two of us are the favourites for the 5,000 metres if we both enter. Ribeiro would like to scare me off into concentrating on the 1,500. I would like her to go away and just run the 10,000 in Gothenburg. She is the European 10,000 metre champion. She should settle for the longer journey.

Conditions are unnerving. Ribeiro ups the ante and makes a big deal about taking the pre-race initiative. She announces that she is making a world record bid and goes about setting the tasks and times for the pacemakers. This is like slapping me in the face with a pair of gloves. In public. It is a challenge and a warning.

I'm the European 3,000-metre champ and am unbeaten at the distance this year. I'm also unbeaten at 5,000 metres. So Ribeiro is challenging my place in our world. I think she has made a mistake. I don't go out much, but I am a student of athletics. I clock and watch my rivals; I absorb the times of every relevant race at every decent meet. I keep asking till I find out the splits and I know the last-lap times. I am looking for little cracks of vulnerability and areas of stress. I'm confident and strong at the moment. Laying down challenges to me is a dangerous business.

I was sure I was going to run really well at Crystal Palace. I set myself a target for a really blistering opening 3,000 metres. Hoped to go out in 8:45 straight away on the night, though my legs told me this wasn't a possibility. I knew I would have to change plan. My legs kept warning me off. So it became a matter of just staying in and winning the race. I don't know why.

I think maybe I was just nervous in Crystal Palace. The stakes went up. The field was high quality. I was too anxious to show something. I didn't want anybody to have the impression that I don't like the 5,000 metres as much as I want them to think that I like it.

In the end I ground it out with the fifth fastest 5,000 metres in history, 14:47.65. Ribeiro watched from behind. It was a win for me. Yet I didn't feel as great as I should have done, I kept having to tell myself that a win is a win.

These are the mysteries of running, tracing the threads which join the mind and the body. Wondering why sometimes the dots just don't join. Some days you have it, some days you don't. Some days you set out for greatness and settle for bloody-mindedness. Some days you set out to make an impression on the clock and settle for making an impression on your rivals.

And sometimes you get kicked back. Not long after the race in Crystal Palace, Ribeiro went to Hechtel in Belgium and set a new world record for the 5,000 metres. Point made and accepted. We will both be in the 5,000-metre field in Gothenburg.

FAST FORWARD. So I am ready. I have had my coffee and bananas, my gallons of water. I have had a light run for the benefit of the legs. I'm primed and ready and waiting. I hate waiting.

I enjoy routine. I depend on the discipline it imposes and the mental comforts it brings. Every night before a race I like to lay my gear out, put my shoes neat and tidy beneath a chair, ready to go. I hate interruptions, distractions, upsets. If there is a problem I just have to find somebody who can sort it out for me.

Grand Prix races are always in the evening time. You change your rhythms for championships. At a Grand Prix on race day I'll doze till ten. Then eat toast, drink coffee and devour bananas. Have a short run before lunch, which is usually rice and bread. I like to take lunch seven hours before a race. In hot weather, I drink water practically all day long. I might eat again five hours before a race, just to fend off any hunger later on. Then I'll relax down and flick through a magazine for the afternoon. Two hours before the race I usually hit the track, ready to go.

Championships are different. Today in Gothenburg we are about three hours ahead of the usual schedule, so today has been a telescoped version of so many other days. I spent the afternoon watching the men's marathon on television and wishing the time away.

Half an hour before race time and counting. Any doubts in my head now could be fatal. It's too late for cures or miracles. On the warm-up track the rest of the 5,000-metre field are jogging and stretching and strutting. I go through my own routine. The stretches, the laps, the high steps, the search for the right feel. I try to give off a look of supreme confidence. In here we can sense weakness.

The gang is all here. Fernanda Ribeiro, the dark Portuguese runner I have been duelling with. Zahra Ouaziz, the Moroccan outsider. Gabriela Szabo, who is starting to turn up everywhere. Paula Radcliffe, who hasn't yet found her event. The Kenyans, Sally and Florence Barsosio and Rose Cheruiyot. The little Swede, Sara Wedlund, and my old friend Gina Procaccio.

We are all circling one another. Pretending we have never met. Putting our race faces on. Bullet-proof!

With 40 minutes to go I nip into one of the line of brown portakabins in a corner of the field and change into my Irish vest and shorts. Tick, tick, tick. With 30 minutes to go I am gathering up my bits and pieces and collecting my thoughts.

The last-call sign is flashing insistently above the warm-up track now. Kim (McDonald, O'Sullivan's former coach and partner) comes over to pin my number (495) to my back. We say our goodbyes, he reminds me what I have to do. I head down the little enclosed avenue that we must parade through like racehorses as we head towards the Ullevi Stadium.

Focus. Focus. Focus. Under the stand on this side of the stadium there is an area where we will meet the media afterwards as winners or losers. There is a holding room where we gather until we are let out on to the track. In here we put our belongings into baskets which have our numbers on them. In here you can hear every pulsebeat. You can keep your head down and avoid eye contact. Or give the impression that this is the place in the world where you would most like to be.

I am first out on the track when the hurdles are cleared away after the men's 110-metre heats. A quick warm-up to get the engine ticking again. When I line up on the white line, Fernanda Ribeiro is right beside me, touching shoulders. No thoughts now. Just the track ahead. Waiting for the crack of the pistol.

Gabriela Szabo, the (increasingly pesky!) Romanian, has pushed the pace early. For a championship race it's a very fast first lap. Sara Wedlund, the little Swede who looks like the Milky Bar kid with her blonde hair and spectacles, makes the occasional little surge, egged on by the home crowd. She did the same in the heats, made a break for it in my heat. I had to track her down and put her away.

Ribeiro waits and waits. So do I. Lap after lap, just watching each other.

As we get closer and closer to the finish, 1,000 metres, 800, 600, 450 and so on, I get more confident. We head into the last lap. Now it is a game of who has the nerve to wait the longest. Ribeiro knows if it gets to the last 200 metres she is mine. It's her move.

She makes her play approaching the start of the final lap. There are just three of us now: me, Ribeiro and Zahra Ouaziz, the Moroccan girl.

When she goes I just stay with Ribeiro. It's important for me to get right in behind her when she goes. I'm there, staring at her number now, and she knows I am there. I never let her get any distance away now, not more than a yard. And I just wait. She knows and I know.

At the 250-metre mark I move outside her and stretch my legs. I know almost straight away that she has no response. 200 metres to go comes so quickly, by now I am just going for the line. Nothing is going to stop me. My race plan has been to do whatever it takes to be World Champion. The most important thing was to win the race. I knew all along I wouldn't know what I would feel like if I hadn't come first.

I win in 14:46.47. Ribeiro is two seconds behind. Tonight, though, I had 14:30 in me if I needed it. I'm the first ever women's 5,000-metre World Champion.

We would all like to be remembered. After Barcelona, and more so after Stuttgart, I had decided to keep on going, working harder and harder, getting a bit faster all the time, always working harder. I wanted to be the best. To get the best from myself. That's why I had done it all. A little slot with my name engraved in the history books.

The joy is brief. I'm an awkward winner. Not quite sure what to do with my arms. You have to run around the track and get it over with. I never looked forward to it. It's awkward and embarrassing.

And anyway today I run straight into trouble on my lap of honour in the Ullevi Stadium.

My father, who has mastered the art of invisibility when it comes to stewards and security guards, was right down at the fence when I started the lap. If he was in the media zone, the athletes' area, the drug-testing control area or on the medal podium, I wouldn't have been surprised.

I went to him, we embraced and then I jumped down to the track. I left him with his Irish flag, I was sure to pick up another one along the way. Sure enough, somebody else has given me an Irish flag which was attached to what felt like a telegraph pole. It was a labour of Hercules just to lift it. I put that down after a short while and went off on a happy lap of honour. I had no idea I had disappointed everybody, even at the end when the photographers handed me a tiny Irish flag to be photographed with. The impact was gone by then apparently and they were running already with the story.

At the press conference afterwards I am asked about the flag business. Paul Kimmage of the Sunday Tribuneasked the question and I couldn't believe it was an issue. I was really upset after it. People were saying it to me. I was explaining I didn't mean that. The emotion came then.

And people were pulling me this way and that, telling me I had to do this television interview with John Treacy next. So I had to compose myself. And of course John, well intentioned as ever, turns up with an Irish hat for me to wear. Damage limitation! This makes me more upset. I don't want to have to perform some corny act to prove to everybody that I love my country. I feel as if I can't talk at all now. I don't want to appear upset, having just won a gold medal. It's a much bigger issue than it should have been.

Kim, of course, cannot understand any of this the way an Irish person would understand it. His head is full of the race and the times and the splits. A 61-second last lap! I'm sure John Treacy spoke to him and told him this was important. John would have been on top of everything like that. I was so upset now I just didn't want to talk. John was gently saying, "You must do this, you must do that." We get it done, me holding the hat, and it's a weight off my shoulders to have it done.

But at the same time it lingered on. Shortly after Gothenburg I won in Berlin. I'm setting off on a lap of honour and somebody threw a tricolour to my feet. Oh god. This is only a Grand Prix race! But do I ignore the flag and risk being lynched? So I pick it up and do a lap of Hitler's old stadium with my tricolour, all the other athletes looking at me as if I have lost my reason. Poor Sonia! Look at her, she thinks she has won the Olympics!

There were a few letters, of course. The patriots. My parents got most of them. They went on for a while. I even got one years later in Sydney telling me that I was a traitor. "Dear Ms Traitor".

I had quite a few traitor letters. They'd come on these little scraps of paper. This one came in through the village office in Sydney. "Dear Ms Traitor. You don't deserve to run for Ireland."

People are more open-minded about these things now. At the time I think it meant more to Irish people. A gap of 10 or 15 years makes a difference. Folk understand better now why people go abroad for their sport. The economy is so much better that it is more accepted. It's not an insult if you run for Ireland but forget to do the symbolism at the end.

It was hard to explain at the time, though. I always tried not to be too emotional about the whole thing, especially when I won. In Gothenburg I was the favourite. I was going to win anyway. I had planned to win. I have another race next week. That's where my mind was. Suddenly I had a flag that was tied on to a big tree branch or something. It was seriously heavy. You cross the line, your arms are really tired. I'd said to myself, there was no way I could get around with this burden. What do I do with it? Do I find whoever handed it to me and try to give it back? You just live in the moment. It wasn't supposed to be a national insult.

At that time not everybody carried flags around the stadium, but people wrote about it and questioned the whole thing.

And part of it was my fault. I thought the racing was enough. It took till 1998 for me to realise that the flag and the lap of honour are such a big part of connecting with the people who are watching you and supporting you.

In 2006 I saw Derval O'Rourke winning silver in the European Championships. Derval was jumping up and down with the flag afterwards. That's the emotion that most people like better than the race itself. It took me a while to get that, though!

LOOKING BACK, Gothenburg should have been a halting point for me. But I was obsessed with working harder and going harder. I announced in the immediate aftermath that I was officially training for Atlanta now.

It is hard to describe my mindset now. On 12th August I won the World 5,000-metre Championship. I recorded how I felt in my diary, noted that I did a 12-minute warm-down underneath the stadium ("very warm . . . but nice").

Next morning I did 55 minutes' easy running in the park and on the Monday I got up at 7.30 am and did some easy jogging and then caught a plane to Zurich. In Zurich I did a 43-minute run that afternoon. I wrote that I felt okay after the first 10 minutes. On Wednesday night I ran in Zurich (3,000 metres in 8:27.51, with a 62-second last lap). On Thursday morning I was "a little bit tired" running 35 minutes in Zurich, but I ran another 20 minutes when I got to Cologne that evening. On Friday I ran the mile race at the Cologne meet (winning and "feeling good" in a time of 4:24 with a last 200 metres in 27.7). Next day, back in London, I did an hour and 25 minutes.

I stayed at home there till Wednesday, when I travelled to Brussels, where I was hot and dizzy during the 5,000 metres on Friday night. Still, I ran back to the hotel immediately afterwards. I felt better on Sunday back in London though, leading the 3,000 metres from the very start at Crystal Palace. And so on and on and on.

I won in Berlin then straight away took a seven-hour trip to Rieti. There I was distracted and nearly beaten in the mile by the pacemaker who was told I wanted to break the world record . . . it was a bit late in the year for world records; still, on I go to Rome, then to Monte Carlo where, still not feeling well, I ran on the Saturday night and then flew to Hong Kong next morning before heading to Tokyo two days later.

I won the 5,000 metres on a Friday night and then did 10 miles through Tokyo next morning before flying four hours to Hong Kong and then another 12.5 hours to Johannesburg and then yet another two hours down to Cape Town. I arrived in Cape Town at 9.30am and went running that afternoon.

I had a week in South Africa, staying with Elana Meyer in Stellenbosch, and then a race in Johannesburg on Sunday, and then straight to the airport from the track. Two days in London. Five in Ireland.

And then off to Haverford again. Back to work. Hi-ho, hi-ho.

Some of my diary entries that autumn just read "felt pretty horrible" . . . "felt terrible". I wrote those words, but with Atlanta looming on a not so distant hill I viewed the feelings they described as signs of weakness.

• Sonia, My Storyis published by Penguin Ireland and will be available in bookshops from October 2nd, price €19.99.

Why I would not like my children to follow in my tracks

WHEN I watch the girls in the garden, running around in the sun, all brown-limbed and happy, I ask myself the question that a lot of people ask me. Would I like them to be athletes? Would I like them to do what I did?

"Not really," is the answer. In a funny way I'd like them to play something different, like tennis or maybe golf; any game that would put them in the mix with people. I don't know that I would like them to play a sport which would take over their lives so completely that they would not be able or allowed to do anything else. I'm not sure if I would like them to be involved in sport to the extreme that I am.

Another question. If Ciara or Sophie came home from an Olympics with a gold medal in her pocket and told me she had won it while on drugs, what would I do? I don't know if I could cope. I hate dishonesty; I couldn't handle it.

Nic (Bideau, O'Sullivan's husband and former coach) always says people ask him about athletes and how would you know if they were cheating. You really wouldn't know. People always expect the coach to know. Or a parent would know. Unless the coach is given the results of all the private tests that a cheat does, the coach is just going to think he's being a great coach.

That is the problem the sport I love is left with. You either trust somebody or you don't. If you are honest and open in everything you do, maybe you will be trusted. If you are dishonest or sneaky about things, there is a chance you will cheat. Certain countries

have a culture where losing is unacceptable and cheating is tolerated. It is a mystery to me, but when I look at people who get caught I often think this: if I ever took drugs and got caught, I could never go home again, never look my mam and dad in the eye, or John Treacy or Marcus (O'Sullivan) or Frank (O'Mara) or Nic.

Nobody I have ever trained with ever tested positive. Nobody Kim (McDonald) ever trained with. Or Alan (Storey, former coach). Or Nic. That has to be what you stand for.

I go on the Internet sometimes and I see people being questioned on websites, people who can't see why the improvements are there. I am amazed at the way the atmosphere surrounding athletics

has changed. When any runner is quite good, there is an easy accusation to be made. That's our tragedy in what is the simplest, purest sport: racing to see who can run the quickest.

There are people cheating just to hang on in the circuit. There are pacemakers who cheat just to stay on as pacemakers.

I am an idealist. People often ask me about great runners, just as I am sure people have asked others about me. They ask me, say, about Haile Gebrselassie. I say that I can't see it. If Haile was ever to test positive, it would be a disaster. The Kenyans and Ethiopians are different from us. They have a built-in facility. They are beatable at the end of season. It runs out. They get tired. They are away from altitude. I can explain Haile's brilliance.

Marion Jones has been a disaster for our sport. In a way, I was surprised she was caught. I really wouldn't have thought she was cheating. That is how innocent I am about the thing. To me, she was so much better and she had that shape, bigger and quicker, so of course I thought she would win because she is built to win. It is hard to understand the whole drug test thing. I've never been to any of these big conferences. I wonder what goes on there. Do they present this whole ideal situation and then can't live up to it? There seems to be a lot of wastage.

When I am at the Olympics, do I believe in the sprint events any more? To be honest, not across the board. Too many people are testing positive. Other people are taking as much as they can that is legal. One bottle here. Another bottle there. The difference is some abstract rule. I find it hard to believe any more.

The throwing events? The throwing at Olympics and World Championships is often more realistic than for the years in between. You get a more level playing field there because the testing has cleaned up this area of the sport. Most of the throwing records that exist would have to be questioned.

The problem is, people you like and feel comfortable around, you never want to suspect. People you don't know, other cliques, they must be the drug problem that everyone is talking about.

There are some: Kim Collins won the 100 metres in Paris in 2003. He was a skinny guy, a nice guy. You think, ah, if he can win, maybe they aren't all cheating.

It disillusions me a bit. This Balco stuff and everything. You think, why bother? Everyone's cheating. It's boring to have to read about it or listen to it; what they are doing, who is doing it.

That's not what you run for. When I see what I do and what Benita Johnson and Craig Mottram, my friends and training partners, do; when I look at the hard work and the care and the detail that goes into it, I get queasy. I wonder then what percentage are cheating, what percentage aren't.

The cheats? Are they laughing at us? I suppose they must be. You can't think too much about it. You have to close it off and get on with it.

People make the point to me that, from Barcelona onwards, they can find cheats in my races; when they subtract them from the equation, I should have got this medal and that medal. Even Gabriela Szabo had her controversy. In 2003 a car belonging to her was pulled in and found to have EPO in its boot. She denied all knowledge, but her career was a bit up-and-down after that.

It's not for me to wonder any more. I never really thought of Gabriela Szabo in that way because she never ran or achieved anything that I believed I couldn't match. She had a couple of dominant years, and I had the same. But did she do things she shouldn't have been able to do? I don't know. If she beat me, I never thought it was the worst disaster ever because, whatever was going on with her, I knew I could beat her on my day. The Chinese phenomenon was the worst ever. Just the way they came and went. I hated never getting another chance at racing against them.

What's worst for me isn't the rumours and the what-might-have-beens that eat your energy up. It is when people get caught cheating and either they get banned or they go away for a while and then they come back. Brazen. No different. They seem to have no conscience, I walk in to a hotel and feel embarrassed because I've been away for a while, having a baby.

They'll walk into a hotel after a ban for cheating everyone else and they never feel any remorse or embarrassment.

All that, it makes me miss the world of athletics less. It is easier to move on because of it.