Summer in Paris and Sonia O'Sullivan dipped her toe into the warmth of the European track season and found the waters still icy.
After a winter geared towards making this year one to remember the doubts neither dispelled nor upheld at the L'Humanite grand prix event at St Denis as Ireland's 5,000 metres world champion came in third in a reasonable time of 15 minutes 3.76 seconds.
But, crucially, she was 30 seconds adrift of Morrocan Zohra Ouaziz and Ethiopian Gete Wami.
A bitterly disappointed O'Sullivan left the stadium not wanting to discuss, at this point, a run that was difficult for her to accept despite the season still being in its infancy.
Put in context, however, she knows that she has more peaks to climb before settling at a level where she is comfortable. That is at the top of the European tree in late August at the European Championships in Budapest.
"It's the beginning of the season. I need to re-establish myself. This year I want to do 1,500 metres. My goal is to win the finals of the European Championships in Budapest. The other competitions like Bratislava and Nice are just practice races," she told the organisers before heading straight to the warm-down area and out of the stadium, not wanting to face the obvious questions.
It was a scene that has been witnessed in a more devastating fashion many times over the last 18 months but one that seems to have been brought on this time by the runner's overwhelming sense of personal underachievement.
O'Sullivan was winning races in Australia with similar times before she arrived back in London for the Grand Prix season. Her frustration may now well stem from her current inability to cope with the excellence of form of two of her main challengers.
Ray Flynn, the former Irish middle distance runner and now a top agent in the sport had a brief word with O'Sullivan. "She was very disappointed," he said. "But I told her not to be so hard on herself at this early stage of the season. Ouaziz has never run anything near that time before."
Ouaziz was astonishing, running 14:42.11, nine seconds faster than she has ever run before and only a second outside O'Sullivan's best mark for the distance of 14:41.40, set in 1995.
Grasping the race as soon as the Russian Tatyana Belovol relinquished her pacemaker's duties, Ouaziz simply took up the running, burning off O'Sullivan into third place with England's Paula Radcliffe in the sixth lap before toughing it out with Wami until the final 200 metres where the Moroccan sprinted clear for a convincing victory.
"I had problems during this race due to the windy weather," the winner said afterwards. "I was afraid to set off. After Hengelo, where I gave a good performance, I didn't think I'd beat my personal record of 14:53 in 1996. Today I thought Sonia O'Sullivan would have done better but she had a few difficulties. It's a pity, we could have both gone below 14:40.00." Ouaziz's words will hardly console O'Sullivan, reinforcing the high expectations after the World Cross Championship victories in March. A good run in Bratislava next week may be what O'Sullivan needs.
That alone is saying that all is not quite right. But it is not broken as much as it was last summer in Athens.
Another Irish disappointment came from Susan Smith in the 400m hurdles. Running a time of 57.14, which she pointedly said she now wants to forget, the American-based sprinter faced her confusion with more pragmatism but as much frustration as O'Sullivan. "It's just one of those races I want to forget and put out of my mind. At Hengelo I went out too slow but finished with a quicker time. Tonight I went out faster but only ran for 200m to 300m. I just don't know what went on. I want to forget this one."
Smith's race was won by Jamaica's Dion Hemmings in 54.21 with Kim Batten of the US in second place. The Waterford athlete now travels to Lithuania where she will meet up with the rest of the Irish team for the Europa Cup meeting.
