SONIA O'SULLIVAN, the world 5,000 metres champion, is off to Australia next month to prepare for a new season in which she hopes to put the disappointments of 1996 firmly behind her.

For the third consecutive year, O'Sullivan has chosen to go the Southern Hemisphere for warm-weather training at the start of what is, unquestionably, her most critical year since she made a breakthrough in international athletics.

She plans to stay there until the end of February and will then go the United States, before returning to Europe to commence her build-up to the World Championships in Athens in August.

Although no firm decision has yet been taken in the matter, it is now thought unlikely that she will compete in the World Cross Country championships in March.

BLE officials were hoping that she would make herself available for selection for the first of the year's major championships, but sources close to the athlete have suggested that it doesn't figure in her programme.

Also ruled out, apparently, are the road races in which she had planned to ease her way back into competition. Instead, she will probably run in selected track races in Australia where the opposition will be relatively modest.

Only then, however, will she discover the rate of her recovery from the problems which turned the second half of her track programme this year into something of a personal disaster.

Illness was advanced as the reason for her dramatic collapse in the Olympic Games in Atlanta and in spite of protestations to the contrary, she still hadn't fully recovered by the time the grand prix season built to a climax at Milan in September.

Since then, she has been in training in London, running well enough to give hope of a return to her best in the new year.

Another Irish athlete with rehabilitation on her mind is Catherina McKiernan who, no less than O'Sullivan, has encountered a lot of disappointment of late. Forced by injury to miss the World Championships last year, she ran bravely but to no avail in the Olympic 10,000 metres in Atlanta.

Now she has run into further trouble in her approach to the cross country season. A training session earlier in the month ended in pain after she damaged her heel. While the injury is responding to treatment, it is unlikely that she will run, as planned, in Holland at the weekend.

Ken Nason, a graduate of Villanova University but now back running in the colours of Lee vale Harriers, will lead the six-man Irish team to compete in the Ekiden road-relay event in Japan a week on Saturday.

Compared to the teams which competed in previous Ekiden races, this squad is lightweight in experience, but the hope is that it will benefit emerging athletes like Colm de Burca and Cian McLoughlin.