Athletics European ChampionshipsIt's far too soon to be running out of things to say about Joanne Cuddihy. A huge talent, superb temperament, and still vast reserves of potential - there's not much more you can say about any athlete that makes a 400-metre final in her first major championships. Yet she's clearly only beginning.

What Cuddihy has achieved in Gothenburg already ranks as one of the great Irish breakthroughs in the history of the European event, which dates back to 1934. And definitely in the sprints. Third in her semi-final, running another personal best of 51.09 seconds, she'll now mix it with the eight best 400-metre runners in Europe. At the start of the summer that was only a dream.

At 22 this could be as far as Cuddihy will come - for now, of course. Her time was just a fraction outside the Irish record of 51.07, which Karen Shinkins has held for seven years, although Cuddihy gets one more shot at the record in this evening's final. Being drawn in the inside lane won't help, nor will a third race in as many days. But one thing is certain: Cuddihy will go for it.

She attacked her semi-final here with remarkable coolness and confidence. At six feet, with a long, powerful stride, Cuddihy covers ground like a vintage Cadillac, and challenged for the lead coming off the final bend.

She was passed by the Russians Olga Zaitseva and Tatyana Veshkurova, but they've both run under 50 seconds. Crucially, Cuddihy had the strength to hold on for third, refusing to tie up.

The Bulgarian Mariyana took the fourth and last qualifying spot in 51.23.

After briefly raising her arms to display her satisfaction, Cuddihy sat trackside for several minutes - obviously exhausted. That in fact is another of her strengths: how she can totally empty herself in pursuit of her ambitions.

"I'll go off and collapse now, if that's okay," she said when eventually making it down to the mixed zone. "But I'm delighted and relieved.

"What I was most anxious about was that I'd let the occasion get to me, and go out either too fast or too slow. But the only place you can really make a mistake is in the first 200 metres. After that instinct takes over, and you just go for it.

"So I think I did go out hard, and still managed to hold on."

And so to this evening's final (5.50pm Irish time), where she's ranked sixth fastest. A medal looks beyond her, yet there is still that Irish record to aim for.

"I'll give it my best shot. But look, I'm only 22, and if I don't get the record then hopefully I'll have plenty more chances to get it after the final."

That's now obvious. The Kilkenny athlete started the season with a best of 52.96, set three years ago, with her natural progress stalled first by glandular fever, then two knee operations.

Maeve Kyle was the only other Irish athlete to make this final, in Belgrade in 1962, finishing sixth in 57.5. Cuddihy might not surpass that placing this evening, but give her a few more years and anything is possible.

After a run like this it's also worth reiterating that Cuddihy is four years into her medical studies at UCD, hardly suited to the life of an elite athlete.

Maybe that's the way forward though - Ireland's second-best effort on the night came from another medical student, Paul Hession.

Hession easily qualified from his second-round heat over 200 metres when taking third in 20.80, with the Frenchman David Alerte winning in 20.68.

The 23-year-old from Athenry had finished an equally cool second in his first-round heat, clocking 20.81.

He runs in this evening's semi-finals with an outside chance of making the final.

"I'm a little disappointed," said Hession, "because that's a race I probably could have won, and got a good lane for the semi-final.

"I was still a wee bit tired from this morning, so with 24 hours rest hopefully I can go quicker tomorrow. This event is wide open, though, with very little difference between the athletes."

Paul Brizzel, the 29-year-old from Ballymena, had also made the second round by running 20.84 in his heat, but that's as far as he got - he pulled up with a hamstring tear just a few strides into his second race.

For Gary Ryan, probably Ireland's most consistent sprinter over the past decade, Gothenburg turned into a farewell trip.

The 34-year-old from Nenagh, competing in his third European championships, trailed home last in his heat, his 21.14 a long way off his best of 20.67 - and then called time on his career.

"It's obviously not the way you want to end your career," he said. "I'm not annoyed with anything I did out there. I just didn't have it. But I had a lot of mountains to climb to get here, and not just the obvious ones.

"People might say that I shouldn't have been here but it was my choice, and I'm the one to suffer the embarrassment of it. I'm always inclined to look to the next race, but now there won't be one, and I will just have to adjust to that."

Ryan wasn't the only athlete to realise no career can last forever. The 46-year-old Jamaican Merlene Ottey, now running for Slovenia, just missed making the 100-metre final by one place - three-hundredths of a second - then announced her retirement.

Later, that title was impressively won by Belgium's Kim Gevaert, the double silver medallist from four years ago, who clocked 11.06.