Athletics:Irish athletics has seldom been in better shape; nor is the sport as unhealthy in global terms as some would have us believe, writes Ian O'Riordan

Con Houlihan has a good line about sprinting: he claims he could never understand talk of tactics; sprinting, he reckons, is roughly equivalent to running away from a bull, and that's as tactical as it ever gets. We recalled that line recently over five bottles of red wine on his 81st birthday, not just because he said it, but also because it sort of captured the athletics story of 2006.

Over the past year there was plenty of talk about tactics in the 60-metre and 100-metres hurdles, particularly whenever either race involved our latest running superstar, Derval O'Rourke.

This was a new experience for me. In the few years of covering major championships it was normal practice to talk tactics for hours with colleagues like Greg Allen and Tom O'Riordan - as long as the race under discussion lasted at least two laps. One night at the 2003 World Championships we went over Sonia O'Sullivan's tactics so many times that the waiter in the Parisian bistro had to threaten us before we'd leave.

O'Rourke presented a different challenge. Her races last either slightly more than seven seconds or a little less than 13. Tactics are definitely superfluous. That didn't stop us sitting around for hours talking about how, why and what O'Rourke needed to do to win a medal at the World Indoor championships in Moscow last March.

We talked about her just breaking eight seconds for the 60-metre hurdles, needing to get to the opening hurdle first, the Swede named Kallur and the Spaniard named Alozie, etc, etc. Then, when the gun fired in the final, O'Rourke just took off running as fast as she could, as if getting away from that bull. It wasn't so much a tactic as an attitude. Just think about running, and nothing else.

Whatever about tactics, sprinting over hurdles has, naturally, a lot to do with technique. O'Rourke's technique is a strange contradiction of maximum output - like the final squeeze of toothpaste from a tube - and minimum effort - like a ripe banana peeled out of its skin. And that was really the key to her success this year.

Take Gothenburg, where the European championships in August brought pressure rarely experienced by an Irish athlete. She had won the World Indoor title in March. Then she was injured for seven weeks and didn't race again until July. She was struggling to break 13 seconds and yet her friends at SPAR had the whole country asking the one question: will she win a medal?

Then she ended up in lane one for the final. If any athlete in Gothenburg had an excuse not to succeed - long season, injury, pressure, lane one! - it was O'Rourke. What she did instead was adopt the one tactic that matters, apply the toothpaste-banana principle; she ended up with the silver medal.

It was one of the great championship performances in Irish athletics history - and, despite failing to get the nod from the RTÉ "experts", she was easily the sporting personality of 2006.

By the way, Gothenburg was probably the most successful championships for Ireland in many years. Five finalists, including 22-year-old Joanne Cuddihy in the 400 metres, proved we are highly competitive at European level - and there's no reason why we shouldn't be winning more medals.

Fionnuala Britton proved that again earlier this month with her fine silver-medal run at the European under-23 cross-country.

Back to O'Rourke: World Indoor championand European outdoor silver medallist in the space of six months. This was a serious rise to the top. Inevitably, there were doubters - the "sure they're all on drugs" brigade - often people with a bar-stool paunch and little knowledge of the sport.

For the record, Derval O'Rourke is not on drugs. She is way too energetic and self-confident and determined to need them.

Once again, however, 2006 found many athletes caught for taking drugs - sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. That's still a problem in most sports, and part of the problem is that these athletes are usually labelled cheats whether they've consumed industrial amounts of anabolic steroids or tiny traces of finasteride, which, by the way, is found in Rogaine.

That's enough to convince some people that athletics has nothing worth believing in anymore. Their argument usually revolves around the 100 metres, and for sure that's a hard one to believe in.

This year alone we saw Justin Gatlin of the US equal the world record, 9.77 seconds, in Doha in May then two months later get banned after testing positive for testosterone - right around the time of that run.

Jamaica's Asafa Powell twice equalled his record - the same 9.77 - in Gateshead in June and in Zurich in August. This may have got a line in some global newspapers but was far from the story it should have been.

Powell in fact has a dozen sub-10 times this year, remarkably consistent, and yet no one seems able to believe in him either.

Enter Marion Jones, the one-time queen of American sprinting. When she failed a dope test after the US championships in June all those non-believers just threw their eyes to heaven, saying "told you so." Then Jones's B sample proved negative and she was cleared to run again.

Apparently there were 183,000 tests done in Wada labs last year, and in fewer than five the B test didn't confirm the A test. You do the maths.

When Gareth Turnbull tested positive for slightly elevated testosterone last June the non-believers were quick to point the finger at him too. Turnbull was a highly promising junior but his career had stalled a little, and perhaps he'd given in to the temptation. However, Turnbull begged and borrowed to clear his name, eventually proving his high testosterone was perfectly natural.

The Irish Sports Council notified him of this by email after his four-month fight, without even a hint of an apology.

It's a little worrying that the harder they try to catch the cheats the more complicated the whole business becomes, and that's why the problem of drugs in sport is probably going to get even messier before it improves.

Anyhow, one other thing that was hard to believe in 2006 - in the original sense - was the retirement of the greatest middle-distance runner of the generation, Hicham El Guerrouj. Back in May the four-time World 1,500-metre champion from Morocco decided his motivation and willingness to compete were no more, and that he'd run his last race.

That happened to be the 5,000 metres at the Athens Olympics, when El Guerrouj pulled off that magnificent 1,500-5,000 double, famously raising a two-finger salute to symbolise his two gold medals.

El Guerrouj thus retires with five world records: 1,500 indoors, 3:31.18; 1,500 outdoors, 3:26.00; mile indoors 3:48.45; mile outdoors, 3:43.13; 2,000 outdoors, 4:44.79.

It's hard to believe he won't grace the track anymore.

Finally, my choice of "unsung athlete of the year" may surprise some, but at least he has always been worth believing in.

Haile Gebrselassie started the year with a world record in the half-marathon (13.1 miles in 58 minutes and 55 seconds - wow!).

The great Ethiopian was targeting the London marathon but suffered an off day and ended up ninth in 2:09:05. At 33 it looked like his best days were indeed behind him.

Gebrselassie thought differently and decided to attack the world record in the Berlin marathon in September.

Despite running the closing miles entirely alone he clocked 2:05.56, just short of the world record and the fastest marathon in 2006 by over 30 seconds.

Just nine weeks later he won the Fukuoka marathon in Japan 2:06.52.

Watch out for this man in the Beijing Olympics - now just a year and a half away.

O'Rourke always believed she would be there challenging for a medal too. A year ago most people would have laughed at that.

Do we believe her now?