Team bronze good as gold for Sonia

In the shadow under the stand at the old racecourse Sonia stands on one side of the barrier and the media form a disorderly crush on the other side, tape recorders outstretched, cameramen jostling. An old familiar scene and you'd wonder by now if she isn't jaded with it.

Christy Wall steps up behind her, though, whispers something in her ear and suddenly she jumps clean off the ground and her face creases into a mile-wide grin.

"We were third!," she shouts and she's as happy as you've ever seen her! "That's fantastic! We've done the job now. If we'd lost by one point I wouldn't be happy, that Ethiopian in front of me was too close. While we were waiting there, waiting to hear where we finished that was in my mind the whole time, 'one more person, I could have passed one more person'. It's great! This is extraordinary. We were third in Turin but third in Dublin is ten times better. The job here was to be part of the team, people were shouting at me going around, 'come on Sonia every place counts'. It did.

"The girls were fantastic. They deserve it. Anne and Rosemary have been running the cross country races here all season. While I was in Melbourne out walking I was reading about them in Athletics Weekly and I was thinking that I'd have some catching up to do to make sure we went well as a team. Probably won't win another bronze like this, this and the other team one are about the only bronzes I have."

For a woman who has won so much and seen so much, a woman who has become the greatest athlete this country has ever produced, this was an extraordinary afternoon, one that yielded as much satisfaction as just about anything else in her memory.

Clawing out seventh place in a world championship just three months after giving birth to her second child, doing it in the context of the other great Irish performances behind her and with the memory of Kim McDonald scenting the afternoon.

Something special.

"I'm glad it's over," she laughed. "It was tough going up that hill the third time. I was dying to get sixth because I've been seventh three times now. The first lap out there was easy, I was thinking I could win it, grand, but three months training it's not enough, really, to do that middle bit. It doesn't matter how hard you go out, in the middle you have to be fit enough, because that's where it gets tough."

It was tough at the start with the Kenyans going pell-mell but it got worse. She could feel pains in areas she had forgotten she could have pains in.

"I had to go well at the start, had to get into a position and hold it. Alan said 'don't put yourself in the lead and drift backward, that's the last thing you need'. I think going into the second lap, going down the fast part, I couldn't keep up as they were going away. There were a couple of girls, Benita and Suzy, and I felt I could keep up but they just got away."

Yet her face was never wreathed with the agonies that accompanied her in Atlanta and Athens and even in Turin the last time an Irish women's team took bronze.

"I was enjoying it. That may be a little thing, when you've been away you tend to enjoy it more when you come back and maybe you forget how to dig in that little bit more and hurt yourself. Alan (Storey) hasn't allowed me to hurt myself too much in training yet. I'll be hurting myself now. It hurt today so nothing will be harder. Coming across the line today it was just happiness that nobody else came past me. I could hear them calling Anne's name just behind me. I knew we had a chance."

For yesterday this incredible team result was more than sufficient but thoughts turned to the summer ahead. "I might have a nice house by the end of summer," she said when asked "because the foundation is great." And to races of the past: "I ran much better today than in Villamura when I finished seventh and that was nearly a year after Ciara. The sooner I start into big time competition the better. It's ideal. This is not as intense as track but it's a world championship and it's relaxing, having all the Irish officials and people down there. It might have been an east Cork cross country race." The sweet circularity of success.