Strange days. It wasn't a return to triumphant times. It wasn't one of the tear-stained disasters the like of which we saw a year ago and hoped never to see again. Last night's 1,500 metre world championship final wasn't much of anything if you were following the woman in the green singlet. The fireworks and argy bargy afterwards were a welcome distraction for journalists with acres of copy to fill, but as to the key question we just don't know. Will Sonia O'Sullivan ever be great again?

How quickly we have forgotten the days of her pomp. A few press conferences which have proceeded like post mortems rather than champagne receptions have dulled our memory.

We aren't quite sure what impression we have of Sonia O'Sullivan these days as her celebrity queues in a holding pattern somewhere over limbo and her career dawdles interminably at a crossroads.

The greatest enigma in Irish sports. We watched her and listened to her last night and wondered what was really going on in that head of hers.

"No doubt about it, I felt great," she said, before describing what happened on the back straight. Her stomach, brown and flat and hard like a skillet, seemed to betray no signs of respiratory distress when she bounced off the track. And yet. If only we knew her better.

Once upon a time O'Sullivan strode the world like an invincible colossus with a Cork accent. We watched her grow towards greatness without ever being sure about what made her tick.

Remember the first impression she made on the national consciousness, cantering away with foalish joy in the final of the Olympic 3,000 metres on a balmy night in Barcelona in 1992. She was hauled back by more clinical brains, but the dizzy courage of her dash for glory was endearing.

A year later she was the real thing, yet in Stuttgart at the World Championships she was spooked and somehow destroyed by the Chinese. She ran a 3,000 metres time which would have won her gold at any previous world championship. She finished fourth.

Yet with the resilience which was to become her trademark, she recovered and took a defiant silver in the final of the 1,500 metres four days later.

The Chinese experience changed her. She pushed herself past the borders of mere obsession, doubling her training load and emerging in 1994 and 1995 as the greatest female athlete in the world.

In Gothenburg, we watched the first medal ceremony of what was to be a prolonged prime. She left the field for dead, scorching the last 200 metres of a 5,000 metre race in 28 seconds.

Then came Atlanta and all that heartbreak. A woman dwindled by a common or garden urinary tract infection.

During the dreg ends of 1996, as she recovered, she spoke about things like perspective and warmth and the realisation that there were better things in life. Not the talk of an obsessive winner.

Last night, in the media mixed zone, we watched her, smiling and saying how good she felt, and wondered if she would ever be the cold-blooded killer we once knew.

The months since Atlanta have been turbulent. Sonia's confidence seems to have eloped with her tactical nous. She ran to the front of the field in the cross country championships in Turin in March, a position she knew was unsustainable. There were other disasters and bold print question marks. The world indoors in Paris comes to mind.

What about Sheffield six weeks ago? Sonia loped home in 10th position, 13 seconds behind one of her keenest rivals, Kelly Holmes.

After Sheffield, Sonia O'Sullivan decided that perhaps there are better things in life than running, but few of them are more enjoyable than beating Kelly Holmes. There may be better things, but there is nothing which Sonia does better.

She took a long walk the next day with her coach, Alan Storey, and they picked like forensic experts through the debris of her season. They shut down the shop, ducking out of competition and eschewing whatever hype still surrounded Sonia.

Last night was to be the proof of the pudding. In the aftermath, Sonia looked composed and reasonably happy. She scooted away from the written media, first having jostled and jabbed with Regina Jacobs and Anita Weyermann. But later she came back and spoke good-humouredly about herself and how she felt.

The message was upbeat. The other evidence was mixed. Of the athletes involved in the hustle and bustle down the back straight, only Sonia hadn't recovered. We've seen her jostled before only to make her way back and salvage something.

In the mixed zone, after Sonia had breezed through, returned and whizzed off again, opinion among seasoned Sonia watchers was mixed. Some felt that the Sonia we knew two years ago would have recovered from the jostle. Others felt her explanation was reasonable and that if Sonia said her career was back on the rails well then it probably was.

The TV monitors replayed the incident. It looked as if Jacobs had a right to be angry with O'Sullivan who in turn had a right to point fingers at Weyermann. Worryingly, they both recovered their stride quickly while Sonia's face instantly drained of hope.

The decision, made on mature reflection last night, not to make a protest was a welcome one, whatever the rights and wrongs of the incident. The race was never going to be rerun. The result was never going to be overturned. Sonia has 48 hours to salvage her career.

So Sonia spends another two days at the crossroads. Those of us who wonder sometimes about the way her head works listen to the microtape playing back her words again and again. We wonder if she was fooling herself, or fooling us. Neither perhaps.

Not time to write the epitaphs yet. The smart money says it won't be that time for a while yet.

As ever, she is the best story in town. If only we knew her better.