Sonia O'Sullivan insists she is not concerned that she will again be competing over 3,000 metres rather than 5,000m or 10,000m in tomorrow's Nice Grand Prix - the place she collected a unique set of European Championship gold medals in 1998. The Cobh star is also not particularly bothered about whether she runs the 5,000m or 10,000m in the Olympic Games.
‘I won't know until I get to Sydney what I will do. It isn't an issue what distance I run. I don't really need to make a decision now. I'm fit enough to run either race’, she said. O'Sullivan, a master tactician, could never be described as laid back. But although facing her great rival and last year's world 10,000m gold medallist Gete Wami of Ethiopia on the Cote d'Azur, she admitted she does not particularly worry about the opposition.
The 30-year-old, with a season's fastest 8mins 36.96secs, said, ‘You don't know who you'll be competing against until you get there and find out who has turned up. I'm happy with running 3,000m - it's one of my favourite distances. My aim will be to improve on my last performance in Paris a fortnight ago. My training tells me I should’.
O'Sullivan, learning to keep life simple under the direction of coach Alan Storey, said, ‘If there had been a 5,000m I would have been happy to run that. So it's the 3,000m again. I don't have any kind of strategy or plan about what distances I run.’
