Athletics The streets of Dublin will finally provide the setting for the first competitive meeting on home soil of Sonia O'Sullivan and Catherina McKiernan.
Both are now confirmed starters for the Women's Mini Marathon on Monday week, and though the clash has come about by chance rather than design it won't be any less fascinating.
For well over a decade now, the great career paths of O'Sullivan and McKiernan have run parallel but rarely crossed - certainly no more than half a dozen times. And not one aficionado of Irish athletics could yesterday recall them ever racing together on Irish soil.
What is known is that the 1997 World Cross Country Championships in Turin was where they last met, and where McKiernan, in finishing seventh, was two places ahead of O'Sullivan.
A lot of running has been done since, and a lot of career shifting too. Yet right now both of them are again rebuilding towards another peak and come into the Mini Marathon on June 2nd with similar ambitions.
On Sunday McKiernan continued her comeback from an extended lay-off by winning the Cavan town 10-kilometre road race, albeit in a casual 34 minutes 17 seconds. She is a previous three-time winner of the Mini Marathon, which is also 10km, and will use the race a stepping-stone to longer-term targets, including the world half marathon championships in October.
For O'Sullivan, the last six months have largely been spent recovering from her uneasy New York Marathon experience, and then injury. Now her latest comeback is ready to begin. Last Tuesday she returned from a month-long training camp at altitude in California and next Monday she runs in the inaugural Great Manchester 10km, her first race since New York.
She too is thinking about the months ahead rather than the weeks ahead, and her main target remains the World Athletics Championships in Paris in late August, and most likely the 5,000 metres. Like McKiernan she views the Mini Marathon as a convenient stop-off, as well as an enjoyable day out. O'Sullivan too has previously won the race and still holds the course record (31:28), set when she ran there as part of her build-up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Speaking from her London home yesterday, O'Sullivan was clearly keen about experiencing another Mini Marathon, in what will be the 21st running of the event. Nor was she totally surprised that McKiernan was also on the start list.
"I had heard that Catherina was running," she said, "but I hadn't really thought too much about it. I was doing some Nike promotion for the race and they just asked me to run it as well. And so that's the way we've planned things for the moment.
"And things are going well now. I've been back doing all my normal sessions and longs runs and things like that. But the race in Manchester next Monday and the Mini Marathon a week later will really be just about finding out where exactly I'm at and how well the training is going.
"But I am mainly concentrating on the track season over the next few months. And because I started back so late this year, May actually feels like April for me. So that means doing all the things now I would normally do in April."
The most important thing, added O'Sullivan, was that she was now totally injury-free. The Achilles tendon problem that had halted her winter training in Australia and forced her to travel to the US for treatment from Gerard Hartmann was showing no repercussions.
"No, injury-wise everything has gone really good, and that's been great. I just haven't set any definite track plans yet, because I'm not 100 per cent sure when I will start racing. The plan is to go away for a training camp in St Moritz for three weeks in June, and work things out after that."
The Manchester race in six days' time will, however, provide a good indication of how well her training is progressing. Included in the field are her old Ethiopian rival Derartu Tulu and current world half marathon champion Birhane Adere, also of Ethiopia. But it probably won't be a winning return as O'Sullivan's form has yet to hit the highest level.
Come the June Bank Holiday in Dublin, form surely won't mean as much. It will be more about rivalry. Neither O'Sullivan nor McKiernan likes to lose on any occasion, and least of all to each other. Although their rivalry has always been distant rather than strong, any occasion when they go head to head is one to be cherished.
Later this year both athletes turn 34 within a few days of each other. Somehow, though, they've managed to avoid racing each other on home soil until now. So even if they are a few months short of their best form it's the sort of day Irish athletics still eagerly awaits.
Athletics legend Haile Gebrselassie has signed up for the London Grand Prix meet on August 8th, joining an already star-packed cast headed by Britain's Paula Radcliffe and Australia's Cathy Freeman.
Ethiopia's Olympic champion will tune up for his latest world championship bid by running the 5,000m at Crystal Palace.
The 30-year-old Gebrselassie, who first ran at Crystal Palace 10 years ago, won his second Olympic 10,000 metres gold in Sydney in 2000 but lost his world 10,000m crown in 2001.
His main goal this year is reclaiming the 10,000m title at the world outdoor championships in Paris in August.
Gebrselassie won his third world indoor 3,000 metres crown in Birmingham in March.
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