Sonia O’Sullivan swaps
the boards for the turf
March
20 1997
MONACO - Monte
Carlo - Ireland’s Sonia O’Sullivan is
down to compete in the World Cross Country
Championships just two weeks after winning silver
in the World Indoor Championships 3000m final in
Paris. O’Sullivan’s narrow defeat to
Romania’s Gabriela Szabo - by 8:45.75 to
8.46.19 - showed that the 1995 outdoor World
Champion at 5000m had overcome the heartbreak of
Atlanta where illness wrecked her hopes. But the
27 year-old is now looking to go one step further
in the World Cross. "I screwed up in the
World Indoors so I’m definitely looking to
win in Turin. The course should be good for me.
It is basically a road track that they’ve
put some earth on. Unless it rains and turns into
a mud bath, I’m looking forward to it.
I’ve been working in the fields for a couple
of weeks to prepare myself. 1996 is in the past.
It’s all about 1997 now and I’ve still
got a lot of hunger inside me," said
O’Sullivan.
 Yet there is a world of
difference between running around Mondo-surfaced
200m circuits indoors and negotiating the muddy
expanses of an outdoor park. Not surprisingly, it
has usually been a case of "either, or"
for most distance runners. The last athlete to do
an indoor/cross double was Ian Stewart, now an
executive with the British Athletics Federation,
who won the IAAF World Cross Country
Championships and a European Indoor title at
3000m in 1975. But should O’Sullivan, whose
best performance at the World Cross was a seventh
place back in 1992, falter the Irish have a
dependable back-up in Catherina McKiernan.
McKiernan, born
two days after O’Sullivan, is a terrific
cross country specialist. She finished second in
the IAAF World Cross Country Championships five
times between 1991 and 1995 but won the IAAF
Cross Challenge on each occasion. In Cape Town
last year McKiernan succumbed to a virus and
finished 13th in the Senior
Women’s race. McKiernan has raced sparingly
this season, but finished second to Elena Fidatov
in the IAAF Cross Challenge in Tourcoing on
February 2.
With a bit of the
luck of the Irish, O’Sullivan and McKiernan
could upset the form book in Turin.
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