2012 OLYMPICS:TWO-TIME European silver medallist Derval O'Rourke will sacrifice next year's European Championships to try and win an Olympic medal in London.

The 100 metres hurdler, who was forced out of the semi-finals of the World Championships in Korea during the summer because of injury, said she could not run her best in two major championships staged so close together.

O’Rourke has made the decision not to take part in the Helsinki European Championships that run from June 27th-July 1st next year. The first round of the Olympic women’s 100m hurdles takes place in London on August 6th.

“I don’t see myself doing them. I don’t see myself running the hurdles in the European Championships,” she said yesterday at the launch of the ESB Electric sponsorship of the Olympic Council of Ireland.

“I’m probably slightly different to other people. I put absolutely everything into one event each summer, literally every part of me. I just don’t know if I would be mentally and physically recovered within four weeks to do that before the Olympics.

“I know if I didn’t put all that into the Europeans I wouldn’t run the way I would want to run in the European championships. For me the Olympics are the priority. I just don’t think it (Helsinki) fits in.”

O’Rourke won silver medals in 2006 in Gothenburg and also in Barcelona last year. Her feelings are that she has done well at European level but has something to prove to herself at the Olympics.

The 30-year-old has also acknowledged that London will be her final chance to perform on the Olympic stage and insists she will not be tempted to try and turn the two European silvers into gold.

“I can try and win Europeans two years after if I want,” she explained.

“I’ve done so well at Europeans but I would never jeopardise the Olympics. The Olympics is a big gaping hole in my athletics résumé. It is somewhere that I haven’t come out of happy yet, so whatever decisions that will benefit that I will take.

“I won’t do anything that will jeopardise that. I’d a nightmare in Athens, I’d a nightmare in Beijing. Appendicitis in Athens. Who predicts that, like? And bronchitis in Beijing. I would think this is the last time for me in terms of the Olympics. I always thought London was the place to finish the Olympics.”

O’Rourke also outlined for the first time how she broke down in tears when it was decided she should not run in the World Championship semi-finals in Daegu during the summer. Known as a big championship competitor, the Cork athlete would probably have made the final had she been fit but just 30 minutes before the race was due to start found that a calf muscle had tightened up.

Following a mini-crisis in the warm up area long-time coach Seán Cahill persuaded her to pull out of the race for fear of tearing the muscle and be forced into a long process of rehabilitation.

“I warmed up and I was fine warming up until I tried to sprint,” she explained. “We do these things where we go 70 per cent, 80 per cent and then over hurdles and I couldn’t run at 90 per cent. The calf was so tight on the right, at the top of it and if I tried to go quicker it was going to rip.

“It was about 30 minutes to call for the hurdles girls. I was saying I’ll do another run flat out to know how it is. I could have gotten the doctor to inject it with something to try and numb it but I wouldn’t have felt it if I’d done something to it. Seán was like ‘No, let’s just cut it there’.

“There’s just no way Seán would let me do that 10 months out from the Olympics. I was saying ‘No, I need to know’. He said there’s no point in me thinking about this and we need to cut it and that’s that.

“I think if Seán wasn’t there I would have tried it. He’s like the rock of sense but I would have tried.

“After I was sort of trying to reach the bus so as I wouldn’t bump into anybody. Seán was with me. I just sat down behind a tent having a cry.

“The only person I want to see is Seán because he understands. He’s the one out in Santry with me when it’s lashing. He went and got my stuff. I put it on and scooted around the back way, got on the bus. There was no one else on it. I could see all the girls getting called for the semi-final. That’s never happened to me before.”

Two days later O’Rourke felt her legs were good enough to run in a meet in Brussels but was again persuaded not to by her coach.

Now O’Rourke will sit down with her coaches Seán and Terrie Cahill and plan for the coming season, having come back from holiday to train three weeks earlier than she would have had she completed the outdoor season.

“My only problem is that I drank a bit of wine in the last three weeks and I ate a lot of chips, put on two kilos,” she says.

All sounds perfectly healthy.