ATHLETICS/In profile: Walker Gillian O'Sullivan tells Tom Humphries why she intends to keep her feet on the ground.

So what are the odds? What would a gambler be tempted by? Where would you begin with calculating the probability, not of Gillian O'Sullivan winning some metal bauble in Paris over the next few days, but of there being a Gillian O'Sullivan at all.

In a country with such steady but unvarying sporting appetite how did a person with the talent of Gillian O'Sullivan manage to intersect with the odd discipline which Gillian O'Sullivan had so much talent for? A race walker from Kerry? It's as if the Welsh valleys had ceased momentarily from the production of male choristers and coughed up a rap artist.

Should a feisty redhead from Farranfore come home from Paris with something gleaming and lovely hanging from her neck the country which spawned her might become more familiar with the slender Irish tradition of race-walking. Should Gillian O'Sullivan go to Athens next summer and repeat the trick we may declare ourselves to be in love with the quirky discipline of the game. We might produce a great wave of race-walkers somewhere down the line.

Or not. In the time of Roche, Kelly, Kimmage and Earley, after all, there wasn't a boil on the bottom of the lowliest domestique that we didn't fret about. And then we went back about our business. It's the olé, olé, olé that we love.

Gillian O'Sullivan reckons there are between 15 and 20 ("tops") senior Irish race-walkers in action at the moment. After that there is a gap to a small clutch of enthusiastic juniors who might be good. It's not a movement. But it's a start.

People are becoming accustomed to the sight of race-walkers wiggling along. Years ago in Dublin Jimmy McDonald (sixth in the Barcelona Olympics. Sixth!) used to take his life into his hands when he left the house to go practise his race-walking. Many and choice were the slices of Dublin wit with which he was assailed.

In Cork, where Gillian O'Sullivan now lives and where the breadth of tolerance and understanding is famous, they are used to such sights."It's not bad really," she says. "For a while it was comments as you passed people but generally people are more friendly than anything else."

It's improved. A few years ago when she herself was still getting used to the idea of being a race-walker people would cruise by in cars leaning out and looking at the show. They'd just slow down and all the faces in the car would turn left and the windows would roll down and the slack-jawed occupants would stare and stare as if a polar bear in popsocks had come to ramble among them.

"I don't mind the curiosity," she says. "I know it looks unusual. I don't like abuse though. Most days you are fine but if you are having a bad day you feel like sticking up the finger."

That's when the trouble would start of course. Abuse is the reflex response of an element of the population to anything unusual. If there is one thing more likely than a racewalker to cause dangerous confusion in the minds of knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers it is a racewalker with her middle finger extended. So she tries to understand their plight.

"They slow down and it's stupid things like 'What's wrong with you, Luv?' I don't mind young fellas so much - you know they're egging each other on - but sometimes it's men in their fifties hanging out of a truck or car window, on their own."

Not only does she attempt to understand them, instinctively her mind reaches for words of advice and succour which if the circumstances allowed she would gladly offer.

"I really want to stop and say 'Get a life'. Some people you'll make excuses for but fellas like that, oul fellas, are too sad."

And then there are the ranks of the merely curious. Those who can get over the fact that this is a woman, a young woman, a young woman out on her own, a good-looking young woman out on her own and she's practising race-walking. They can accommodate all that knowledge. Just not the why and the how.

"'How do you not run?' That's what they usually ask. 'How do you not run?' 'Why don't you just run?' It's not like I'm trying to run but can't."

They might as well ask a mountain climber why they don't take the cable car. Or a swimmer why they don't get the ferry. Or a ballet dancer why they don't perform jigs. She's not trying to run. Very much central to the business of race-walking is walking.

You know the rules, don't you? Once every four years you look on as in places like Sydney and Atlanta this unusual sport earns itself a stage. You know the basics, everyone does. Contestants must keep at least one foot in contact with the ground at all times. Maybe once every four years you try doing that in your living room, pounding across the carpet, declaring that to be easy-peasy.

You know too about the most exciting part of race-walking. The disqualification. A walker removing both his or her feet from contact with the ground gets a warning. Three warnings and you are out. The curse of lifting afflicts the best. In Mexico, something of a mecca for the sport, mere mention of the case of Daniel Bautista Rocha can bring tears to the eye. In Montreal in 1976 Bautista won Mexico its first ever track and field gold when he walked to victory in the 20,000-metre event (which exists only because the original 10,000-metre event was so quick it caused incessant arguing over lifting). Bautista, dehydrated and record breaking, became an instant hero.

Later, TV showed that he had clearly been lifting on the final lap. Hard not to, one would have thought, but sympathy was scant. Four years later in Moscow Bautista was in first place again with 2,500 metres to go when he was yanked from the race.

That left the Russian Anatoly Solomin in front but pretty soon he too felt the tap on his shoulder. Three of the leading pack of six at the 15,000-metre mark were eventually ejected. An Italian won a surprising gold.

So it goes.

"Mentally it's very hard," she says. "When you are walking you have to concentrate harder. Every step is being judged, obviously. You have to concentrate harder in the latter stages because your technique goes when you begin getting tired."

Your technique goes, your aching muscles hear the finish line calling, your head hears the clarion calls of the medal ceremony, your mind starts skeetering all over the place and all the while you rein in your thoughts. One step, another step and another . . . Of course there's more to the technique than your quick walk around the settee suggests.

The walker must straighten the leg at each step at the point of contact with the ground. Which doesn't mean you have to walk with your legs straight all the time - just straight while in contact with the ground. Little bit harder, isn't it?

Gillian O'Sullivan and her coach Michael Lane use the NCTC in Limerick a lot. Michael will make a video of Gillian walking, shooting her from the front and from the side. There's so much technique to work on.

"He'll be able to show me then all the places where I'm going wrong and when I'm training he can remind me. He'll shout 'watch the shoulders', say, because I have a tendency to move them a lot and I need to keep my shoulders a little more relaxed, keep my arms steady instead of letting them look awkward. That attracts judges. And you need good heel contact when you strike out your foot. There's all those things."

That's why she doesn't just run. Her mind is boiling with concentration on just walking properly. Race-walking is a discipline of the mind as well as the body. Every step demands your attention. Mentally it saps you. Physically it slaps your body about a bit.

"The typical injury for a walker is the knees and the hips. And the lower back. All of us have little bits of lower-back trouble because we rotate so much and that takes its toll. We wouldn't get as much impact injuries, fewer stress fractures, even though we train on the road, because we're not pounding." Yippee for that then.

Training session aren't much fun either. No joyous explosions of jogging. She lists the sort of work she does. A middle-distance runner's schedule done by a walker.

Reps: That's a 4k walk done three times with a 2k warm-up. Sometime she goes longer, maybe 25 to 30k, but the reps would be the steady stuff during the week. In the winter she's not content unless she's doing 80 or 90 miles a week.

The addiction started at the Community Games. Before that she ran everything. Then with the curiosity of a 13-year-old casting about for something to thrive at she tried out for race-walking. She won in Kerry and got dizzy with the excitement.

On to Mosney.

"There was a good girl from Offaly and a girl from Clare. I remember qualifying first in my heat and thinking I had a good chance. I went out hard and was able to keep it going. The Offaly girl went out really hard in her heat and faded then. In the final she did the same thing. She was second and the Clare girl was third. I was never so excited over anything. I felt like I'd won the Olympics."

So a 600-metre walk in Mosney 13 years ago has led to this, a career and a 20-kilometre walk in Paris.

She won the schools events all the way up. A few girls provided competition but they aren't around anymore. That tends to happen in walking. People fall off the scene.

"They go to college and get the good life," she suspects.

In her teens she joined Farranfore/Maine Valley athletics club and soon met her current coach. Lane's influence on the current crop of Irish walkers is inestimable. He competed in the Worlds in Split in 1990 and while competing abroad treated knowledge as bees treat pollen.

He got himself covered in it and then flew home. He studied the Mexicans, the Spaniards, the Russians, talked to coaches and sourced the knowledge. He was Irish coach in Sydney and may well be Irish coach in Athens.

"Before I went to college," says O'Sullivan, "I trained in the summer and then I got more serious, doing five days a week, going morning and evening. Michael is very professional. He understands you are human. You mightn't want to go training sometimes.

"He gives you time to develop in college, when you are trying to study. He didn't push too much early on. If you improve very quickly you'll stay static for a while. I've improved every year. For a coach you need somebody to talk to and to watch you."

It's a bit of a struggle, she says, but things are getting better. Grants (e19,100) and sponsorship from Lee Strand help her get to races and to warm-weather training."

She spent the last week in Annecy and came up to Paris on Wednesday, having tapered off nicely. She's looking forward to the competition. There is a certain camaraderie in race-walking, a marginal discipline like triple jumping or high jumping.

"We'd know each other. We meet the same people all the time."

She's worried about a couple of traditional rivals and a new Chinese girl - but not too worried. Paris. Then a break and then she'll start looking towards Athens, looking to maintain that steady, year-in, year-out improvement. Step by step by step . . .