ATHLETICS: Spiderman could have told her. During the summer, Sonia O'Sullivan was speaking to the Welsh runner Jon Brown about the experience of running in the New York marathon. Sonia suggested that the course seemed largely flat and manageable. Brown shook his head.
"Wait 'til you get to the slope up to the Queensboro Bridge and your legs are heavy," he said.
Prophetic words. It was on the bridge that O'Sullivan's challenge for a marathon which looked within her capabilities came to an end. Not long afterwards, Brown's race ended at the same place. The bridge was where Spiderman fought his nemesis in the recent movie. There were auguries aplenty.
For O'Sullivan, a New York marathon which had promised so much fell apart for reasons of tactical inflexibility and inexperience. In training, O'Sullivan had been running on course for anything between 2:25 and 2:20. Yesterday, she came home in 12th place with a modest time of 2:32.06, some six minutes behind the winner, Kenya's Joyce Chepchumba.
For O'Sullivan, who spent the past couple of months devoting herself to making the leap to marathon distance, the race was a bitter disappointment and may bring to an end the athlete's flirtation with the most punishing of distances. Having come here with confidence and buoyed by good training and good road races, she ran too slowly when the scope was there for running with juice and couldn't go with the race in the final 10 miles when the going got tough.
O'Sullivan was visibly upset as she contemplated the wreckage of a race which she ran with dangerous naivete.
"The gap opened up really quickly," said O'Sullivan of a sundering which brought a pack of eight runners away form the field and left her trailing with 10 miles to go. "It opened quickly on the bridge. I don't know if it was before that or after that when my legs just tightened up and I couldn't feel myself run properly. Margeret (Okayo) went past me. I tried to go with her. I knew she'd probably catch up, if I went with her I'd catch up too. But I went for a while but couldn't keep going."
It was a long, lonely day for O'Sullivan from there on, and she complained later that her hamstrings had tightened for some reason as the miles went by. Hitching her wagon to that of Okayo, who was suffering back trouble throughout the race, is an indication of the difficulties she encountered.
When Okayo's troubles in the first half of the race were at their most acute, O'Sullivan should have been inserting distance between herself and the holder. Instead, she cruised behind a clearly slow pacemaker.
Winner Chepchumba had broken away by that stage with a group which included Marla Runyan, the visibly-impaired American runner, Oliver Jevtic of Yugoslavia, Kerry McCann, one of O'Sullivan's Australian straining partners, Ether and Lornah Kiplaget of Kenya, Milena Glusac, the unheralded American, as well as Russians Lyubov Denisova and Ludmila Petrova.
Only Okayo, finishing courageously, would pierce this group for a high finish (sixth).
The Irish success of the day was Mark Carroll, who finished sixth in the men's race, with a fine time of 2:10.54, thus opening up the possibility of an interesting phase to his late career. It was a gutsy, resilient run which re-establishes him as a premium athletic talent.
Put in context, Carroll's time would have won New York on half of the 32 occasions the marathon has been run.
Prior to yesterday the best Irish time in New York belonged to John Treacy, who had a 2:13 in 1988. Treacy's Irish record of 2:09:15, set in Boston that same year, still stands, but in yesterday's aftermath a buoyant Carroll felt he could get inside that mark on the right course.
"I felt very good until First Avenue. Bit of a headwind there. Felt it in my ribcage. Caught for breath. Maintained my rhythm for the last 10. I'm happy. There was a big break at 22 (miles), I was back at 10th or 11th and I saw guys like Med Keflezighi and Hendrik Ramaala coming back towards me. Last five miles was the hardest part. No question. I think I'd run 2:07 in Europe on a flat course.
"Twelve months ago I thought I was about done. My knee was screwed, I needed surgery. Pleased to be in one piece and running under 2:11. This is my base work I tell you, though, I'll run 2:07 in the spring, in Europe."
In London? "Depends on how generous David Bedford (race organiser) is," he laughed.
The race was won by Rodgers Rop, a policeman from Nairobi, in 2:08.07. One assumes the leave arrangements are generous. Rop won the Boston Marathon earlier this year and was third in New York last year.
See also Page 7
