Timely Swiss warning for O'Sullivan

Anita Weyerman was promising an early, triumphant return to Belfast after an imposing performance had enabled her to put 60 metres between herself and Paula Radcliffe at the end of the Coca Cola race in the grounds of Stormont Castle. And on that promise she duly delivered.

With an authority which brooked no argument, the 21-year-old Swiss girl strode to the front at the start of the last of the three laps and from that point, was lost to the pursuit.

It was a run of outstanding quality on a soft, heavily sanded course and the reverberations, one suspects, will reach all the way to Sonia O'Sullivan in Australia.

Weyerman, the most gifted of Switzerland's emerging athletes, finished fourth behind O'Sullivan in the short course race in the world championships in Marrakesh last March. Now, stronger and wiser, she will present an even bigger threat if the champion returns to defend her title at Barnett Demesne in nine weeks' time.

Even at this embryonic stage of her career, Weyerman's credentials are impressive. A world Junior track champion at 1500 and 3000 metres, she finished third in the European 1500 metres senior championship at Budapest last August.

More recently, she defeated Tegla Loroupe in a road race over seven kilometres. And on Saturday, with the accumulated experience of the last year, she looked even more formidable as she skimmed over the terrain to demand the approval of even the most critical.

Inevitably, it proved all too much for Radcliffe, who, on numerous visits to Belfast, has endeared herself to the local public. Most of those assignments have ended in the frustration of finding at least one athlete too good for her and, sadly, nothing much had changed on Saturday.

Typically, she ran the early part of the race from the front, banking on her strength to wear down those queuing up behind her. Ominously, however, she could never detach herself from the Swiss athlete.

It is a measure of Weyerman's confidence that she chose to make her effort as early as 1250 metres out. That was a tactic born of deep assurance and it paid off as she stretched farther and farther away from the Briton.

"I thought I was in reasonably good condition but Weyerman ran brilliantly out there," said Radcliffe, who races once more, in France, before returning to the Pyrenees for altitude training. "The next race in Belfast is the big one, however, and hopefully it will be a different result then."

With O'Sullivan absent and Catherina McKiernan recovering from injury, one had to go all the way back to 17th place to find the first Irish finisher, Teresa Duffy.

Ireland had a bigger in put into the men's race, at least in the early stages, when Dermot Donnelly and, for a brief period, Seamus Power showed the way to other, more experienced rivals.

If Power's surge proved deceptive, Donnelly delighted the crowd, by running bravely on weakening legs to take fifth place and validate his recent decision to pursue an international career with Ireland rather than Britain.

However, he was still some way adrift as the race built to a thrilling climax, with last year's winner, Kenya's Laban Chege, embroiled in a tense struggle with Denmark's Carsten Jorgensen, a former European champion, and Hendrik Ramaala of South Africa.

Jorgensen looked the most likely threat to the compact Kenyan, as the trio braced themselves for the final charge.

Indeed, Ramaala, who had won the Glen Dimplex cross border race on his only previous visit to Ireland, looked in some trouble when he lost three yards going up a sharp incline.

In the end, however, he held the greater reserves of strength and, with Chege and Jorgensen concentrating on each other, the South African swept through to win by a second in 25 minutes, six seconds.