O'Sullivan cruises to victory in extra-time

Sonia O'Sullivan had cause for mixed emotions after leading almost 5,000 runners, the vast majority of them there for fun, through the finish line in a five kilometres road race in Hilversum, Holland.

Despite some difficult conditions O'Sullivan was happy enough with her performance until she arrived at a point late in the race to discover that the course had been measured incorrectly.

In all, she was required to run almost 500 metres more than she expected and instead of a time in the region of 15 minutes, she was given figures of 16 minutes 30 seconds, way outside her personal best, in the official race returns.

"It's more than a little annoying to go out and run hard and then discover that people haven't measured the course with any degree of accuracy," she said.

"I reckon the measurement was out by approximately 500 metres and its difficult to excuse something like that.

"I went through 4,000 metres in just under 12 minutes, which means that, according to the race organisers, it took me something like four minutes 30 seconds to run the last 1,000 metres. That is daft but that's the way it looks in the official race results."

The late withdrawal of the South African Elena Meyer meant there was nobody in the race capable of staying in contact with the Irish woman after the first 800 metres and, from that point, she drew farther and farther away to finish out of sight of the rest of the athletes.

"I was so far in front in the early stages that they weren't much of a help to me and I certainly couldn't have helped them, but I was still happy enough with the way I ran until I discovered the race didn't end at the point I figured it should have done."

Mark Carroll, another of the more realistic Irish contenders in the Olympic Games at Sydney in September, also had reason to be pleased with his performance in his inaugural 10,000 metres run in California on Saturday.

Returning to competition for the first time since winning the European 3000 metres indoor championship at Ghent in February, Carroll may have surprised even himself with a time of 27 minutes 46.6 seconds at a meeting at Stanford University.

This was some two seconds faster than the national record which has stood in John Treacy's name since 1980 and it provided the Cork man with the perfect launch for the most critical season in his outdoor track career.

It means that he now holds the Irish record at three different distances - 3,000, 5,000 and 10,000 metres.

A German court said on Saturday it had agreed to study an appeal by former 5,000 metres Olympic champion Dieter Baumann against a legal decision not to allow him to resume competing.

Baumann has been suspended since November after tests showed he had levels of nandrolone 10 times over the accepted limit. Baumann will give a press conference today.