Sonia O'Sullivan: Back on Track

Sonia O'Sullivan is not just back to form. She is having the best year of her entire career.

At the end of the tunnel in Budapest's Nepstadion, what seemed like an endless sequence of interviews began to fray the nerve endings of the small corps of Irish media, waiting for Sonia O'Sullivan to jog towards them.

They were ready to ask questions about how shocked she appeared when she crossed the line in the 5000 metres final and about how good it felt to be the only athlete to win two individual gold medals at the Championships. And, of course, they wanted to know what it was like to be back.

Through the painful soap opera-like saga of Atlanta in 1996 and onto the subsequent chapter of disappointment at the 1997 World Championships in Athens, it had been tough to report on and draw quotes from an athlete whose career was in an apparent downward spiral.

Her World Championship triumph in the 5000 metres in 1995 and her European 3000 metres gold in 1994 had become more and more difficult to recall with any clarity. The disappointments were heaped upon each other and distorted the memories of a smiling, waving Sonia embracing her father that night in Gothenburg.

That smile, though, had returned in Marrakech last March where her double gold performance in the World Cross Country Championships represented a stunning return to form. But she still had to bring that achievement back to the track to completely convince herself, and others, that the scars of her Olympic trauma had healed sufficiently.

O'Sullivan's failure in Atlanta and her erratic comeback over the following twelve months left her heading towards becoming just another runner in the pack by the end of 1997. She admitted that she no longer intimidated other runners by her sheer presence on the start line, as she had done in her best years between 1993 and 1995.

Throughout 1996 and much of 1997, there had been something missing. The lightness of her step, so evident in her medal performances in Gothenburg, Helsinki and Stuttgart, began to go even before she journeyed to the United States less than a fortnight before the '96 Games.

She looked lethargic and somewhat strained in the 5000 metres in Rome in early June 1996, and she needed a quick final lap to ensure that her year long victory sequence remained intact.

Things picked up in the subsequent weeks and it looked as though she was running into form. That was before a world record attempt at 5000 metres in London went awry only halfway through the race. She struggled a little, but won with another big final lap effort. The Olympics were only a fortnight away and in hindsight, these were significant signs.

Her state of mind and body was not what it should have been on 5000 metres final night in Atlanta and she never looked well even before the gun went. As to why her preparations drifted off schedule in the weeks before the Games, subsequent tests detailed signs of a urinary tract infection. The domino effect then kicked in.

An unwise decision to run the 1500 metres probably set her back further, and the unconvincing end of season races in northern Italy merely compounded her problems.

The popular theories that abounded—a possible crisis in her personal life and a fear of being unable to live up to expectations—were unproven and unlikely sources of her failure.

Had she finished fifth or sixth in the final those theories might have held up to reasonable argument but when she went out the back door in a 5000 metres, it meant that something potentially damaging in the long term had happened. It was more likely that the reason for her Olympic disappointment was the accumulation of number of factors. One of them was that the effect of having recovery days followed by hard days, was broken to a degree by her experience at the hands of the Chinese at the World Championships in 1993, after which she vowed to increase her mileage and train even harder.

It seemed to work over the following two years, but by Atlanta it appeared that the deep well of her strength had simply been drained dry and it had left her vulnerable to the kind of infection that was subsequently discovered.

These days she is a reformed trainer. After linking up with English coach Alan Storey in the spring of 1997 she now uses a pulse monitor for her long runs and internal sessions. For an ideal steady run, she works her heart rate up to around 150 beats per minute and then keeps it there.

Learning to trust a coach's direction has not been easy for her. Before she was introduced to Storey she effectively coached herself, believing that she knew what worked best for her. But after her ninth place finish in last year's World Cross Country Championships in Turin, she was ready to change.

It took a while for the coach and athlete relationship to solidify, but things began to turn her way by early spring this year as she ran three good races in Australia and New Zealand.

Sonia's personal life had, by then settled considerably and there is a calm reflective side to her now that seems less impulsive and more mature. Her boyfriend of almost two years is a likeable young Australian coach, Nick Bideau, while a rift between herself and manger Kim McDonald was healed last December when they talked out their differences at a road race in Hawaii.

She even changed her running kit contract from Reebok to Nike and so the dusted down Sonia who emerged in the dry heat of Marrakech was an almost completely re-modelled athlete.

The experience could have re-opened the wounds of old, but within days she had clocked her fastest 1500 metres for two years, finishing second in Bratislava. A month later she only just lost out to Ouaziz in the Nice 3000 metres in her best time at the distance for three years; 8 minutes and 28 seconds.

The world two mile best time she set in Cork and her victory in the 5000 metres at the National Championships in Santry were remarkably her only summer successes, until she stood on the track for the 10,000 metres final in Budapest. At a distance she had never tried before, Sonia coped superbly with the concentration required over 25 laps and covered the moves made by Paula Radcliffe and Fernanda Robero before producing her fastest ever closing 200 metres in a major championship.

Four days later in the 5000 metres final, the world champion Gabriela Zabo apparently panicked inside the first lap, then bolted to the front only to make herself a sitting target for the fast finishing O'Sullivan.

Those athletic experts who theorised that the notoriously nervous Zabo would be freaked by what she had seen O'Sullivan do in the last lap of the 10,000 were proved correct. As the final progressed, Zabo tried to usher the Irishwoman through by moving out into lane two, but not surprisingly, the offer was turned down. 
O'Sullivan made her move off the final bend and outkicked one of the fastest finishers in women's middle distance running.

As the corps of athletic journalists waited for O'Sullivan to come towards them in the Nepstadion tunnel after her 5000 metres gold medal performance, it was worth reflecting on how far she had come since giving a brave if tearful interview to the media almost exactly a year earlier in the tunnel in Athens.

In the twelve months since then, she has not just turned her career around. 1998 has been her most successful year ever, with four of her six senior major championship gold medals coming in a five-month spell. She has regained all her old speed and has a new found strength.

She has learned that restraint in her training and racing schedule along with trusting her coach should bring her to a peak for major championship races. And judging by the wide-eyed look of joy in her face as she finally approached the waiting media in the tunnel that for her now is what matters.

If it were written in fiction, the story of her last two years would be barely credible.