ATHLETICS:HALF OF Ireland's 16 track and field athletes will arrive in Beijing today from their training camp in Matsue in Japan, and for four of them, the long, anxious wait is almost over - although they're probably not the only ones.

With the athletics action getting under way inside the Bird's Nest on Friday, it was make-or-break time for the four athletes carrying injuries in recent weeks, and all four of them, it appears, have made it.

The biggest concern was over Joanne Cuddihy and whether or not she'd get to run the 400 metres, having missed almost a month of training in the run-up to Beijing.

Yesterday morning in Matsue, Cuddihy went through a final time trial over 300 metres, paced by the 800-metre runner Thomas Chamney, and came through it satisfied enough to confirm her place on the start line - and will therefore run on Saturday morning.

Alistair Cragg has also put two full track sessions behind him this week, and confirmed he will run the heats of the 1,500 metres in Friday morning's opening session.

Cragg is effectively using the race as a tune-up for his specialist event, the 5,000 metres, and despite the concern about his Achilles injury of late, he's sticking to this plan.

There is positive news, too, about Eileen O'Keeffe, who has come through several testing training sessions in Matsue, with her knee-cartilage injury largely contained for the time being.

The only doubt that still remains, it seems, is over the exact fitness of Derval O'Rourke, who appears to be over the worst of her adductor-muscle tear but still hasn't quiet returned to her best.

She runs next Sunday morning, and having missed some crucial training over the past fortnight, she faces a difficult test just to survive the heats.

"In general things couldn't have gone much better since we got out here," says team manager Patsy McGonagle. "The mood has been very, very good and improving all the time, and at this stage we're just looking forward to getting into Beijing and getting the show on the road."

The Irish team weren't the only ones with injury concerns coming into Beijing. For the 100-metre favourite, Tyson Gay of the USA, the hamstring injury that cut short his racing this summer looks to be a thing of the past.

Gay hasn't competed since limping off the track following his 200-metre quarter-finals at the US Olympic trials back on July 5th, but in a very public time trial, he ran the 100 metres for a large section of the American press on Sunday - and by all accounts was back to his best, timed at just under 10 seconds.

"I've been looking for an indicator to let me know where I'm going to be at, and I think today let me know," he told the reporters afterwards, adding that further examination in Germany had shown the injury was more serious than a mild hamstring strain, as originally thought.

"I had a real specific MRI scan, and doctors said I had a slight strain in my tendon.

"So it was a little worse than what the US doctors had seen. I did have slight doubts, but that's just a part of it.

"Being a track-and-field athlete, sometimes you think you're Superman, you can run any time you feel any pain, do a warm-up, spray some 'stop pain' on it, and it will go away."

Now, Gay is happy to talk up his potential clash with the Jamaican pair of Usain Bolt, who ran a world-record 9.72 seconds in May, and, Asafa Powell, the former world-record holder.

"Someone told me this is one of the most anticipated 100-metre dashes in Olympic history," he said.

"Well, I just think this rest really did me well."