For the second time in five days, Sonia O'Sullivan will reach out for the attention of millions of her compatriots, home and abroad, when she runs in the final of the Olympic 10,000 metres championship in Sydney tomorrow (9 a.m. Irish time).

O'Sullivan has never been braver than when chasing Gabriela Szabo all the way down the finishing straight in a riveting climax to the 5,000 metres final on Monday. Now the task is to do it all over again and, hopefully, this time achieve the ultimate accolade which would crown a remarkable track career.

Hers is a fascinating and intimidating mission. In 10 years at the highest level

she had run only two competitive 10,000 metres races before Wednesday's heat at these Games. The first, at Budapest two years ago, brought her an European title, the other, in Australia earlier this year, earned her an Olympic qualifying time of 31 minutes 43.07 seconds. To win Olympic gold in only her fourth track race at the distance would be to stand convention on its head. And yet, the measure of the quality of her 5,000 metres run in the stadium on Monday is that she is now the athlete the others believe they have to beat to take the title.

That much was evident on Tuesday when Gete Wami, the Ethiopian who for many is the champion in waiting, was at pains to learn of O'Sullivan's rate of recovery from the exertions of the previous evening.

A deliberately subdued performance in the heats has left the answer in abeyance, but in a little over half an hour of hard, concentrated running tomorrow the Irish woman aspires to provide a conclusive response.

"It's going to be hard, very hard," she said. "I'm going in there expecting to have to dig deeper than at any time in the past. But I'm up for it.

"The way I see it, it's going to be a case of having to run hard and concentrate from the start. But in many ways that suits me better. I wouldn't like to see a repeat of the World Championships in Seville last year when they dawdled for the first few laps and then, suddenly, a few were up and away.

"There are lots of athletes in the race with the ability to win if they get it right on the day. The Ethiopians are always hard to beat and the fact that they now intend to run as a team makes them that little bit more dangerous.

"Gete Wami, like me, has already run three times here whereas Derartu Tulu is going in after only one race. But that in itself doesn't mean anything. Tegla Loroupe, for example, ran the marathon last Sunday, but I expect her to be among the contenders for a medal.

"Paula Radcliffe, too, is going to be there or thereabouts at the finish. But I'm ready to run as hard as I can for as long as I can and see how it goes from there.

"After three days' rest, I'm fully recovered from the 5,000. It is as if I'm going to race in the stadium for the first time. And it's great to be involved in the last day of the track programme. It's always a very special day and the crowd lifts the athletes.

"It's difficult to predict how it's going to work out in the end. But if I have to give that little extra, I'm ready to do it."

There have been occasions in the recent past, notably in the grand prix meeting at Crystal Palace in July when, for all her extravagant talent, O'Sullivan floundered inexplicably in races she ought to have won.

That was a comment we rarely made in that period of her career leading up to the Atlanta Games when, bizarrely, she went from near invincibility to the fallibility of an athlete who could no longer unnerve the opposition.

We may never know what precipitated that change. But the Atlanta experience ate so deeply into her self belief that when crisis loomed she frequently lost the innate ability to fight it.

That was until the third and fourth laps of the 5,000 metres final here. For the first time in four years, perhaps, she looked impending disaster in the eye and survived.

Many of us believe that was a turning point in her career. And it imbues us with the hope that for all her limitations in experience in the 10,000 metres she can summon another big performance to ensure a happy ending to for an Ireland team which gave a flawed performance.

There are many risks, particularly if, as now seems certain, the three Ethiopians decide to make it a test of speed as much as endurance. Ominously, Portugal's Fernanda Ribeiro is now running with much of the enthusiasm which fuelled an epic win in the 1996 Games and, no less than Tulu, her predecessor as champion, is unlikely to be fazed by a strong early pace.

Radcliffe, as ever, will run boldly at the front. But her track record suggests that when the race builds to a big finish as it surely will, she is unlikely to have the equipment to survive.

For O'Sullivan, the great doubt is whether she will get the distance in a truly-run race or whether her challenge will already have withered before she gets the chance to demonstrate the finishing pace which sets her apart from the others. "I have prepared all summer for this race and now that it's arrived, I'm happy. I have done the homework and neither the event nor the people in the race will intimidate me," she emphasises.

Let us wish her well on a journey into history!