Decisive win for McKiernan

It was business as usual for Catherina McKiernan yesterday when she marked her return to competitive action with a decisive win in the Paris Half Marathon.

Betraying no ill effects from the knee injury which required surgery in December, she won going away from Daria Naeur (Switzerland) and Marlene Renders of Belgium in a time of 71 minutes.

McKiernan overcame the handicap of having to run with a badly blistered foot for more than 10 miles to dominate the women's section of a mixed race which attracted 13,000 entries on the wet and windy streets of Paris.

Viewed in the light of the fitness problems she has encountered since winning the Amsterdam Marathon in November, it represented a highly significant performance and she was quick to acknowledge the point afterwards.

"While I was satisfied with the way my training had gone, I still wasn't sure how my knee would react in actual race conditions," she said. "As it happened, everything was fine and that was a big relief.

"I still have a bit of a crash course ahead of me to get myself in the right condition for the London Marathon in six weeks time but this was a good start."

Referring to the blister, she said: "It was a lot of my own making. I picked it up in training last Thursday but didn't do anything about it. Today, it started to give me trouble after a couple of miles but luckily it didn't really effect my performance."

Renders, thought to be the biggest threat to the Irish woman, never figured as a potent force at any stage of the race and in the end it was left to the relatively unproven Nauer to chase McKiernan home.

Compared to her time in Lisbon last year at the corresponding stage of her London preparations, McKiernan was some four minutes slower yesterday, testimony to some uneven pacing in the middle stages of the race.

Yet, the primary purpose of her mission, to establish her racing fitness, had been realised and now in company with her coach, Joe Doonan, she is off to the Algarve today for three weeks warm-weather training.

James Nolan finished fifth in the world 800 metres indoor championship in Maebashi, Japan yesterday after producing a fine performance to finish second in his semi-final race on Saturday.

Conceding all the advantages in experience, Nolan produced another brave run in the final but on this occasion he didn't have the strength to go through with his effort.

The title went to the South African Johan Botha who underlined his impressive rate of progress by beating the defending champion and world record holder Wilson Kipketer of Denmark in one minute 45.47 seconds. Nolan was timed at I:47.77.

A week after losing to Tim Harden at the US indoor championships, Maurice Greene overcame a nervous start to beat his old rival by one hundredth of a second in the men's 60m final. Greene, the 100m world champion, clocked 6.42 sec which was three hundredths outside his world record. Britain's Jason Gardener was third in 6.46.

In the women's 60m final Gail Devers lost to Ekaterini Thanou of Greece who had a winning time of 6.96sec. Inger Miller of the United States was third. The American blamed her defeat on long-standing injuries.

Haile Gebrselassie proved his amazing versatility with a dramatic 1,500 metres victory from Kenya's Laban Rotich to become the first man to win two titles at a championship. Gebrselassie earned $100,000 for winning the 1,500m and 3,000m races. He was matched on the women's side by Gabriela Szabo of Romania, who stormed to the 3,000m title following her 1,500m victory on Saturday.