ATHLETICS: Ian O'Riordan talks to Azmera Gebrezgi, who two years ago  found a haven't in Ireland.

Forget all you know about the loneliness of the long-distance runner. Azmera Gebrezgi has rewritten the story. It's about survival as much as success, how even the most difficult of circumstances can be defied by the purest desire to run. And it's only the start of something big.

In two short years Gebrezgi has become one of the most promising athletes in the land. Short because that's exactly the amount of time she's been living here. Born and raised in the east African country of Eritrea, she first arrived in Dublin aged 16 to run the World Cross Country championships in Leopardstown. Seeking asylum wasn't the easy option after that but it was her only choice.

Now she is set to return to the World Cross Country when it's staged in Brussels next month, and she'll run in the green vest of Ireland. Although those two years have passed quickly from a running point of view they've been filled with long, lonely moments that few athletes of her age could even imagine. But she's beaten those moments, along with the challenges of those athletes around her.

In fact Gebrezgi hasn't lost a race in Ireland for almost a year. Last Sunday she collected the Interclubs junior title to add to the Leinster schools title won earlier in the month, and before Christmas she won both the national under-18 and under-19 championships, as well as the junior Intercounties title. In all those races her unmatchable finishing speed was her trump card.

Yet she feels her finest achievement to date was winning the under-20 title at the Celtic International cross country, in Ayr, Scotland, back on January 24th. For a start it was her first time to represent Ireland, and she also found herself running harder over the 7 kilometre race then she'd thought possible.

"That was my best race so far," she says, "but also my most difficult. I'd heard just before the race that one athlete in there was very good but I didn't know who she was. When she ran off I knew it was her, but I felt I still had to run hard to beat her, to get a good result. But at 4km I realised she was flying, so I had to let her go and run on my own."

Part of the problem was that the senior race was run with the under-20s, and it turned out the athlete ahead of her was Scotland's Liz McColgan, former World 10,000 metre champion and still competing at a high level. Gebrezgi eventually finished a minute behind in second place, but beat several other seniors and was a long way ahead of the next-best under-20.

That love of running was something she only discovered when she was 15 and during her final year of school in Eritrea.

Winning a local race qualified her to run in the national trial, and from there she was selected to run in Leopardstown.

Although it was her first time out of the country, even seeing an aeroplane, her family decided she shouldn't return. Military service would have been required once she did, and the only way out of that was marriage.

So armed only with her own independence and courage she went from Leopardstown to the refugee centre on Dublin's Navan Road, where she was brought in as an unaccompanied minor. From there her story takes a unique and fortunate twist.

Living in the area was Mary McKenna, former international 800-metre runner and now coach at Celtic Junior Athlete Club. She'd left her number at the centre on the off chance that someone might ever inquire about running. Exactly a week after Leopardstown, where she'd worked as a volunteer, she got a call from Sr Breege Keenan at the centre, and that was the start of a precious bond between McKenna and Gebrezgi.

When McKenna first called in she found Gebrezgi still wearing her red Eritrean tracksuit. And, she adds, "she had as much English as I had Eritrean". But within days she had the young athlete joined up with her club, running freely on the Polo Grounds of the Phoenix Park and starting the slow and difficult process of adapting to a new life in Ireland. And still her running potential remains largely untapped.

Now two years on and just turned 18, Gebrezgi is in the Leaving Cert class at St Mary's Dominican Convent, Cabra, and gradually putting her old life behind her, but not the memory of her mother and sisters, whom she hasn't seen for two years but hopes can come to Ireland later this year.

"I'm happy with everything in Ireland now," she says. "I'm happy with my school, and I'm happy with my running. I only miss my family. And I want to be the best athlete I can, and hopefully that will mean going to the Olympic Games in the future."

And if she ever does make it there, expect her to wear the green vest of Ireland with pride.