Back to the future once again

SHE got on with the business of just dealing with it. In Sonia's world, things don't just happen. There is reason for everything.

Cause and effect.

In 1992, when she finished fourth in Barcelona, she fingered her tactics as the cause. Now she is tactically peerless. In 1993, when she suffered in Stuttgart, she decided she wasn't working hard enough. Now nobody works harder. Last year, when she lost in Gateshead, she decided her sprinting was off. She did 10 100 metre sprints by the track side that night.

On Sunday night, when she found the right exit through which to escape the 5,000 metres final, she looked first for her family and second for the cause of her trouble. Stomach problems the previous Friday seemed like the only glitch in her otherwise perfect preparation. The cause and effect pieces seemed to fit each other. Dehydration. Weakness. Defeat.

She spoke to Dr Joe Cummiskey on Monday morning, satisfied that she had her body under control again. She Cocooned herself on Tuesday, training in the tentative manner of any athlete between a major disappointment and a hugely important heat.

Championship running reveals truths that the world of the warm up track can seldom hint at. On Wednesday morning, she got to the warm up track in Cheney Stadium early, and worked out with her old friend Frank O'Mara. She wanted to convince herself so badly that she was 100 per cent that she had little problem convincing O'Mara.

The track side sign summoned the 1,500 metres heat competitors to the stadium. She took the half mile bus ride to the stadium. Dipped on the line, ready to run. Struggled as the track told its truth.

She left with the tears on her cheeks again, all the certainties of her world dismantled.

Since Barcelona everything had built towards this. The investment in endurance work. The honing of speed. The construction of a psychological edge over every other athlete in the middle distance game.

She has been relentless and remorseless, picking off opponents. With the Olympic 1,500 metre final in her mind, she got herself into a race of that distance Just after the world championships 12 months ago. Just so she could pick off Hassiba Boulrnerka, the world champion, and snag a thread in her confidence. She lost once last year, to Kelly Holmes. This summer she led Holmes to a personal best in the 1,500, but still left her yards behind in Crystal Palace.

This was to have been her time. Tonight was to have been her crowning moment.

Instead, she flies home to London with the results of a huge battery of medical tests to ponder. She's suffered the effect. She's not used to depending on others to find the cause.

She wouldn't be the athlete she is if, in the past couple of days, she didn't let her mind wander four years ahead to the Sydney Olympics.

She will be 30 years old then and her speed may not arrive when summoned. Maybe she will move up a distance, battle for the 10,000 metres. Maybe. Every great career needs an Olympic success to validate it.

She will flinch, though at the thought of making allowances. She will realise deep down that nothing that happens in Sydney can ever inform the history books of her greatness in this, the time of her prime. She will never again be the prohibitive favourite for two Olympic gold medals.

Yet the grain of her greatness is such that she will pour herself headlong into the lonely task anyway. Four more years. Hard to believe that she won't have her time in the sun. Hard to believe that the big star from the small place won't make it happen.