Ready to take on the baton

QUIETLY, she has been circling these games, waiting for this moment

QUIETLY, she has been circling these games, waiting for this moment. She slipped back into America last Tuesday week, installing herself once again at home in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, just a good run from her old alma mater in Villanova.

Re established herself on the network. Picked up running mates. Went to the track. Called her old friend and Villanovan running mate, Gina Procaccio. Ten days before the Olympic Games and here she was in the quiet leafy lanes of Bryn Mawr and Haverford.

"I said to Gina that it was the weirdest feeling driving back from the airport. It was like I never left, as if all the track season in Europe never happened. Everything was so familiar. It was strange, coming back knowing every corner of every road, everyone's life going on just the same way. It would have to make you relaxed. Everything was just the same. Well nearly."

Nearly. Bryn Mawr had a new coffee shop. Marcus O'Sullivan was back to share track sessions. And that short European season had taken place. Tomorrow night, when she digs inside herself at the sound of the bell, it will be both the tranquil sameness of rural Pennsylvania and the encouraging electricity of Europe that she will draw upon.

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"Since Europe, I've been mostly taking it easy. A couple of track sessions and that's about it. Everything has been good. Especially late on. Especially Oslo. I needed that for the confidence. Then Nice felt pretty easy."

She exorcised the one defeat on her sheet last year in Oslo, coaxing Kelly Holmes to a personal best time in the 1,500 metres and then beating her handily.

"It wasn't just picking off Kelly Holmes that pleased me. I was nervous beforehand. I know I could have gone much faster in that race, I was too cautious early on. After that and Nice I went for another 5,000 race in London. I didn't feel as if I had to do a 5,000 before coming to the Games, but I didn't think that there was any reason not to do one."

She hit Atlanta on Tuesday, holing up in a hotel somewhere on Planet Reebok. The Atlanta Games have had their share of chaos and queues and even the superstars of these games have been forced to stand in line, say cheese for the camera, and wait for their accreditation to be issued.

"You get here and you just decide that that is all part of it. In one way the Olympics are just an other race. It's ridiculous to be hopping around the place with excitement. You don't get really nervous til you go to the warmup track, but the whole thing about the Olympics creates a big circus, makes you think that the race is something different. It's still just a race on a track with people watching. You have to do the same things. It's just that the result will mean a lot more."

On Wednesday she, gave a brief press conference in a big white, tent perched above Interstate 85. Slightly strange occasion.

Reebok hosted the conference, shuttling their stars on and off stage all morning. The media who attended the conference, were dizzy and distracted from a week of watching Michelle Smith, scarcely able to desist from asking the middle distance runner what she thought of the flash new phenomenon that is the Olympian swimmer.

Same old Sonia. The answer was filtered through her competitive genes. While Michelle Smith had two medals, Sonia could catch up. Beyond that, who could tell. The lesson for the day was that Michelle Smith had prepared as well as Sonia O'Sullivan and had delivered.

Some moment this past week, Sonia O'Sullivan might have reflect on the ever changing and slightly treacherous surface of the road she travels. She left London for the US as the odds on favourite to be Ireland's first fully decorated female Olympian.

She races tomorrow night knowing that the nation has been at fever pitch by the poolside for seven days. Luckily, she has never invested too much energy: in nudging her way onto Ireland's, Golden Girl rostrum. Tomorrow, night will primarily be a personal affair, the latest twist in a story which has brought her from US colleges championships in the late 1980s to world student champion in 1991, to an Olympic fourth place in 1992, to world champion 12 months ago. The length of such journeys can't be measured by outsiders.

As is usual on these big occasions, her family are here, slipping into town on Tuesday armed with tickets and flags.

"It's like a holiday for them and I just run a big race in the same city. It's not really that different for the at this stage when they come because I don't see them too much. It turns out, say, that I always meet with my mother and father between races. My mother wants to make sure. I'm okay and my father wants me to know he's there and that he's surviving his nerves. You get used to that."

She's used to it all by now. The mark of her preparations this season and this week has been her relaxation. She exudes the confidence of a woman who has done all that could be done.

"The season started slow for me, but when it clicked it really clicked. I can't think of any big problems. People said the heat was going to be terrible, and in my imagination the heat got so bad that when I got here it could never have been as hot as I imagined it was going to be. It's not bad actually. I'm just doing things like I'd do, them anywhere else. I'm all set.

From pool to track, the Olympic baton passes.