ATHLETICS: Partly inspired by the Roger Bannister's enduring greatness, Sonia O'Sullivan has taken another positive step towards the Athens Olympics. At a celebration event at the Iffley Road track of Oxford University - where 50 years ago yesterday Bannister first ran the four-minute mile - O'Sullivan won the women's mile race in four minutes 27.79 seconds, writes Ian O'Riordan
O'Sullivan showed she is far from a spent force in world distance running. She ran the last two laps alone, with Australia's Georgie Clarke some way back in second in 4:31.76, and hit almost perfectly even splits, passing halfway in 2:14, before finishing with a 65-second final quarter.
It did not threaten her Irish record of 4:17.25, set in 1994 - still the fifth fastest women's mile. But it was encouraging, and followed her 14:58.43 clocking over 5,000 metres at Stanford in California a week ago. She now heads to Balmoral in Scotland, where tomorrow she runs a 5 kilometre road race against world cross country champion Benita Johnson of Australia, and world 10,000 metre champion Berhane Adere of Ethiopia. Catherina McKiernan has opted not to run.
Central to her good form, says O'Sullivan, was the four weeks spent at altitude in the mountains of southern California: "I knew as my training progressed at altitude in the previous couple of weeks I was coming back to form, and getting the result I did from a racing situation in Stanford was very pleasing. I only decided to run there at a late stage as we were monitoring my programme right up to a couple of days before the race. But in all the years I've started my season in Australia I never ran a faster opening 5,000 metres and I see this as very encouraging."
After Balmoral she'll run the Manchester 10km road race on May 23rd, and the only thing certain after that is the 5,000 metres at the Cork City Sports on July 3rd - and of course the same distance in Athens.
The men's race at Oxford was won by Australia's Craig Mottram, training partner of O'Sullivan, in 3:56.64 - not exactly hair-raisingly faster than Bannister's 3:59.4 of 50 years ago.
