O'Sullivan out of Zurich meet

Sonia O'Sullivan has withdrawn from next Wednesday's Weltklasse meeting at Zurich, the most lucrative on the Grand Prix circuit…

Sonia O'Sullivan has withdrawn from next Wednesday's Weltklasse meeting at Zurich, the most lucrative on the Grand Prix circuit.

In the first public reaction to her failure to win a medal in the World Championships in Athens, she confirmed that she had deleted the Swiss meeting from her itinerary.

The Irish athlete has been one of the bigger draws in Zurich in recent years, setting a meeting best of eight minutes 27.57 seconds in the 3000 metres event in 1995, a record which is expected to survive for some time.

She is still insisting, however, that no decision has yet been made, on whether to compete in the remainder of the Grand Prix programme which resumes on Wednesday and continues for the next month.

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"I intend to do nothing more strenuous than a bit of jogging when I get back to London and depending on how I feel then, I will make up my mind on what I should do," she said.

In spite of speculation to the contrary, O'Sullivan did not amend her original travel arrangements to return to London yesterday. Instead, she went to the Olympic Stadium to watch Susan Smith and fellow Cork athlete, Mark Carroll compete on Day eight of the championships.