While Sonia O'Sullivan was failing to some familiar rivals in Honolulu, Catherina McKiernan was recording yet another impressive win in her new road racing career.
Running in a six-kilometres race in Palermo, McKiernan went away from Kenyan Florence Borsosio in the closing stages and won comfortably in 18 minutes, 30 seconds.
It was her eighth international win in a sequence which began with a victory in Paris in April. Since then, she has won her first marathon in Berlin and recently produced the fastest 15-kilometre run of the year in winning in Amsterdam. She now plans to run her first cross country race of the season in Durham on January 4th.
O'Sullivan's racing slump continued as she failed badly in defence of the Waikiki Mile title she won in Honolulu in a course-record time last year. The Cobh athlete finished seventh in a field of 11 in 4:35.57.
However, Sinead Delahunty stayed in contention for 1,200 metres before falling off a fierce pace set by Canada's Leah Pells. The 26year-old Kilkenny woman, who was New York's Fifth Avenue Mile runner-up in the fall, finished fourth in 4:31.72. American Regina Jacobs, her country's top 1,500 metres runner, surged home in the final stretch to win her second Waikiki Mile in three years.
Jacobs broke O'Sullivan's course record with a 4:26.05. Pells was second in 4:27.34 and Suzy Hamilton, America's second-ranked 1,500metre woman, was third in 4:31.14. China's Wang Junxia, the 23-yearold Olympic 5,000 metres gold medallist, who has the second fastest 1,500 metres time in history (3:51.92), finished last (11th) in her first American road mile race. Her time was 5:16.23.
Chinese team-mate Dong Liu, who beat O'Sullivan by three seconds in 1993 for the world 1,500 metres championship, was ninth in 4:36.60.
Observers were hoping to see O'Sullivan and Jacobs battle it out near the finish to resolve last summer's flare-up in the last 250 metres of the World Championships 1,500 final at Athens.
Jacobs, who won the silver in that race, continued to claim last week in a Honolulu newspaper story that O'Sullivan cost her the gold when she briefly grabbed the back of her singlet to avoid falling in the last 250 metres. O'Sullivan refused to be pulled into a war of words before the Waikiki Mile.
"I'm looking forward to getting a lot of training behind me before the next season and I know I have a lot of work ahead of me," said O'Sullivan before the race. "The main thing for me is to be ready to run as fast as possible in June or July. Last year, I was running fast in December and not June and July, so I would much rather run faster in the middle of summer than in the middle of winter."
O'Sullivan disappeared before the post-race press conference and awards. Asked what she thought O'Sullivan must do to break out of her half-year slump, which saw a low point at the World Championships (eighth at 1,500 metres and seventh at 5,000 metres), Delahunty said she sympathises with her compatriot.
"She knows what she has to do to get ready this summer," she said. "Everyone's training and they know what works for them. It's a personal thing sometimes and people don't want to talk about it."
Delahunty, who lives and trains in Brighton, Massachusetts, said she will skip the indoor season next year and concentrate on getting ready for the outdoor circuit. She will be back to visit her family for Christmas.
Although Marcus O'Sullivan says he's in his last few months of competition before retirement, you wouldn't have known it from his performance Saturday afternoon in a hungry men's field of much younger elite runners.
O'Sullivan (35), survived a torrid half-mile pace on beach-bordered Kalakaua Avenue to pose a threat in the third quarter before sprinting in third in an eight-man sub-four minute finish. Canada's 25-year-old Graham Hood, who upset O'Sullivan in the 1995 Millrose Games mile, won his second straight Waikiki title in 3:55.66. Hood shattered the course record of 3:57.54, set by America's Marc Davis in 1994. He was followed home by Kenya's 26-year-old David Lelei in 3:57.42 But O'Sullivan soundly beat 23-year-old Canadian Kevin Sullivan (3:58.39), the recent NCAA cross-country runner-up. The other sub-four minute finishers were America's Steve Holman and Bob Kennedy and Kenya's Moses Kigen.
