Dennehy-Willis misses out

There was no fault with the effort, yet like the rest of the Irish this week, Breda Dennehy-Willis failed in her quest to gain a place in a world championship final. Of the three Irish competitors in the 5,000 metre heats her chances looked strongest but her 10th-place finish ultimately left her well short.

With the top five in the two heats joined by the five fastest losers, Dennehy-Willis knew she needed a top-10 placing at the very least. For a long while she sat comfortably but when the pace was pressed from 1km out, the Irish challenge was killed off.

"It was by far the toughest heat, and I knew I had to be thinking about the top 10 to qualify," she said, happy at least that she had out-kicked the Ethiopian Werknesh Kidane of Ethiopia to move up one spot on the last lap.

"I was thinking before about leading if it was slow but after seeing what happened to Mark (Carroll) and James (Nolan) I thought no. I got in a good position only after a lot of pushing and I knew I was 10th, but I pushed it hard.

"I just haven't quite had the series of races that I wanted coming into this."

With the win going to Spain's Marta Dominguez in 15:15.81, just ahead of Olga Yegorova and Garbriela Szabo, the Cork runner came home in 15:26.97. So began the agonising wait during the second heat to see if she would advance as a fastest loser.

Once Dong Yanmei of China started pushing the pace, it was clear the Irish athlete was out of luck.

Instead the tempo was faster throughout, and won by Yanmei in 15:09.44. Indeed four of the fastest losers came from that second heat.

Una English was even further back in 18th in the first heat, in a time of 16:26.15, more than a minute outside her best.

Then Maria McCambridge found it equally hard in the next heat, coming home in 17th and an almost equally disappointing 16:04.49.

It was a tough experience for the Irish but Dennehy-Willis offered some thoughts on what is going wrong.

"Do the Irish train together, do they go on training camps, at altitude?

"I mean the Russians have a great system and you can't blame it all on the drugs. They put proper money into coaching and proper money into training. They know exactly what it takes.

"You run with someone like Szabo and I don't think she breathes at all. And I was doing a session on the track the other day and I passed Yegorova and she wasn't breathing either. But I've been watching them train for a few days now and they don't do much. They are just so much better prepared."

Concluding a day of disappointment for the Irish was the failure of Gillian O'Sullivan to finish the 20km walk. She was disqualified for a third foul after pushing the tempo a little too hard shortly before the 10km mark.

After a 10th-place finish in the Olympics last year, it was the ultimate disappointment for the Kerry athlete.

The only consolation there was that Olive Loughnane ended up in 13th, not far outside her best with a time of 1:35.24. Victory went to the Russian Olimpiada Ivanova in 1:27.48.

Sarah Reilly couldn't improve on her Irish record run of the 200 metre heats and also failed to progress from the semi-finals.

Running in lane one, she clocked 23.24 after a poor start, but still has the satisfaction of her 23.02 of earlier in the week.