The Olympic Council of Ireland could yet be facing a selection dilemma for the women's marathon at the Sydney Olympics next September. Catherina McKiernan has already been pre-selected, but only with her B-standard qualifying time achieved in an injury-hampered run in Chicago last October.

At the time, it was more or less assumed that nobody else appeared capable of getting the Astandard. But right now Teresa Duffy - winner of the Dublin Marathon two years ago - has targeted the Rotterdam Marathon next month with that very ambition in mind.

Should she achieve the A-standard of two hours 33 minutes, which will require a improvement on her best by some four minutes, then she must be automatically selected ahead of B-standard athletes. The current rules also state that countries can only send B-standard athletes provided nobody has the A-standard. All hypothetical of course, but since McKiernan has no plans to run a marathon before Sydney, things could yet get a little complicated.