IT'S NOT often in recent years that Sonia O'Sullivan has found herself in competition with another Irish athlete for the attention of the international media. Her lesser known team mates have frequently sat and suffered in isolation as commentators courted the attention of O'Sullivan.

It's different in Turin this week. Here in the heartland of Primo Nebiolo, the IAAF president, the World Cross Country Championship is being held for the first time. And in cross country, celebrities don't come much bigger than Catherina McKiernan.

It may be true that after seven years of trying, she is still awaiting a world title success. Yet, her monumental bad luck in finishing second in four consecutive years to four different athletes, has fired the sympathies of even the most insensitive.

And so it is that McKiernan's attempt to end that train of frustration has provided a storyline for the first cross country championship to carry prize money.

The story of Ireland's two outstanding women runners, born within 48 hours of each other in different parts of the country in 1970, is not wholly dissimilar to that which produced cyclists of the quality of Stephen Roche and Sean Kelly in the same generation.

On the track, McKiernan has only seen the back of her arch rival when their paths converged in major championships. Cross country running demands the same qualities of speed, power and balance - but in different proportions. And here, the imbalance is in McKiernan's favour. On the last occasion they clashed, in the world championship in Boston in 1992, it was O'Sullivan who watched McKiernan's back as she went away from the Cork runner over the last 1,200 metres.

This, unquestionably, is McKiernan's favoured athletic discipline. But form in tomorrow's race for a first prize of just over £25,000 is clouded by two new factors. For one thing, the title will be decided over 6,600 metres, longer than O'Sullivan has ever run before in championship competition, shorter than McKiernan's preferred distance. And then there is the course, described here as "like nothing ever seen in cross country competition.

Much of the course, in the city's famous Valentino Park, traverses roadway and paths and to restore an element of credibility to the occasion, truckloads of grass carpeting, brought in from outlying areas, have been laid on a base of rubber and wood shavings.

Although there is no climb of any significance, it has, surprisingly, been well received by athletes arriving in the city over the last two days.

O'Sullivan was out early yesterday for a training run and afterwards said she was happy with the surface. And the prospect of running an extra 1,600 metres tomorrow, doesn't faze her either.

"Stamina has never been a problem for me and after a good build up in Australia, I think I'm ready to cope," she said. "This, for me, is a more prestigeous event that the World Indoor Championships and to win it would be a tremendous honour.

Words fall only haltingly from McKiernan's lips on occasions such as this, but by her standards, she is still upbeat.

"After my earlier injury problems, training has been fine for me in the last couple of months. I think I'm running well, but I won't know how well until I get on the starting line on Sunday morning."

Unlike O'Sullivan, she has run only twice this season, finishing second to the brilliant Romanian, Elena Fidatov, in France in February and then interrupting altitude training in New Mexico to win a 10 kilometre road race in Dallas.

For many Irish people, this is the only duel that matters tomorrow. But that, of course, is to overlook the fact that it is merely a segment of a expansive drama which will be played out to a televised audience of millions worldwide.

On this occasion there will be no Gabriela Szabo lurking in the background, waiting to test O'Sullivan's conviction in the closing stages. But judged on the season's results, the threat posed by Fidatov is even greater.

In all, she has won five Grand Prix races but significantly, failed to make an impact in the European Championship, in which she could finish only fifth behind another Romanian, Iulio Negura, who was later disqualified, Julia Vaqera of Spain and the Finn, Annemari Sandel.

Nobody will benefit more from the longer distance that Derartu Tula, the former Olympic 10,000 metres champion who beat McKiernan at Durham in 1995, and her Ethiopian teammate, Gete Wami, who came out of the pack to win last year's race in Cape Town where the Cavan woman was suffering from a throat infection.

O'Sullivan, like McKiernan, is planning to go with the early pace in the hope that she can hang on to make her track speed tell at the finish. Whether she can make the tactic work, only time will tell, but either way, it promises to be an occasion to enhance the sporting year.

Thanks to a belated decision by BLE, Ireland will be represented by a full team in the senior women's race. Maureen Harrington, Valerie Vaughan, Una English and Pauline Curley will be hoping to pack sufficiently well to give themselves an outside chance of getting into the medals.

Seamus Power and Tom McGrath are the only Irish representatives in the men's senior race, in which Paul Tergat will be hoping to win the title for Kenya for a third successive year.

Gareth Turnbull and Marie Lynch will be in action in the junior races which open the programme.