She was happy. O’Sullivan has never been able to mask her feelings so you can always tell with her. Leaving the track she paused to acknowledge a pocket of Irish supporters whose tricolours were draped over the top deck of the stand just above the athletes’ tunnel. As the bell sounded for the final lap, when she was detached in seventh just running against the clock, they had chanted her name one more time, willing her home. She knew she wasn’t alone and she was glad of the company.
She made it as a fastest loser, cut adrift from the leading pack in her heat, outpaced when the turbo injection came with a kilometre to go, but in her reaction there was no vanity, no wounded pride. Most of her life she sat in the cabin of the truck, often with her hands on the steering wheel; so now a seat in the trailer was taking her to the same place: no big deal.
Her time was only a second outside her best of the season and she had run quicker than the winner of the first heat. She said before the Games that when she goes into a race these days she has to have Plan C in her mind; on Friday night she had to scroll down only to Plan B, no further.
Plan A was making the final automatically as one of the top five, but when the pace picked up she calculated the effort it would take to keep in touch and realised how much of it would have been wasted energy: “I really wasn’t in there tonight to race for the top five,” she said. “It was very hot out there and I felt I’m going to save my huge effort for Monday night.”
All year everything has been calibrated towards making the Olympic final. She dipped in and out of the grand prix circuit as Athens drew closer but the risks in that exceeded any potential reward.
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At 34, O’Sullivan doesn’t have the legs to compete with the new elite week-in, week-out. At the world championships in Paris last August the 5,000m was won by a girl 15 years her junior, the Ethiopian Tirunesh Dibaba; on Friday night the winner of O’Sullivan’s heat was another Ethiopian, Meseret Defar, who is 14 years younger.
Her partner and agent Nic Bideau was determined that O’Sullivan’s spirit wouldn’t be broken running against these girls all summer. As far back as February he set out the plan: “At the age of 34 she can’t be getting worked up for everything that comes along. You can’t always be like the younger ones who rush down the hill and go for the first thing that comes along. The older ones have to walk down the hill and get the main prize. There’s also no real point in trying to take on the Africans (over the summer. If you start losing it just eats away at you.”
So here it is, the main prize. Can she get it? How can she hope to get it? At some point during the interviews in the mixed zone after Friday night’s race O’Sullivan was asked what her ambitions were for the final. She swerved the question, claiming that she had given it no thought, but the question and her response clarified how things have changed.
In Sydney four years ago we would have known, without asking, that gold was her ambition. Even in Paris last August, after she finished second in her heat and looked comfortable, we would have assumed that she still felt capable of winning a medal. Now we ask the question in diplomatic language and she takes no offence.
The whole landscape has changed. The presence of the British runner Jo Pavey in O’Sullivan’s heat on Friday night reminded us of how the world has turned. When O’Sullivan was struggling halfway through the Olympic final in Sydney four years ago and she was detached from the leaders she hung onto Pavey like a liferaft. But when O’Sullivan found her strength and her equilibrium again she flew past Pavey and left the British girl to finish 12th in her own time. On Friday night Pavey and O’Sullivan raced together for a while but with three laps to go Pavey pressed on the accelerator and mixed it with the big girls all the way to the line. Tomorrow night Pavey won’t be one of the pre-race favourites.
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“If you look at the final,” said her coach Alan Storey yesterday, “there are lots of young runners coming through and a lot of them have the ability to run 14:40 or faster. A whole clutch of young Ethiopians and Kenyans and the Turkish girl. Sonia has never run 14:40.”
Her career best time for the 5,000m is 14:41.02, which she ran in the Olympic final four years ago. Storey makes the point that, historically, finals are often slower than heats but how can we conceive a scenario which would put O’Sullivan in a medal-winning position? She doesn’t have the power to kick for home a couple of laps out and run the finish out of the others. There was a time when a sprint finish off the final bend would have suited her best but she doesn’t have the kick she once had and others have more acceleration.
When Elvan Abeylegesse threw in a 68-second lap at the end of 4km on Friday night O’Sullivan wasn’t able to cover the move at her ease. In the world championship final in Paris she was left standing by a 67-second lap.
Granted, that run in Paris was too bad to be true and the mystery of why precisely she was tailed off in last remains to this day, but the reality is that we don’t know how she will respond tomorrow night when somebody pours coal on the fire a few laps from home.
She said on Friday night that she was saving her “huge effort” for the final. But if she needs such an effort just to hang on to the leading pack, what will she have left for the final reckoning? You can dream if you wish but you must know that the Olympics is the world’s biggest slaughter house for dreams.
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“I’m looking at getting into a final,” she said before the Games, “and hoping that anything can happen after that.” It doesn’t sound like a plan.
If this is to be her last Olympics we pray that there is one more big run in her legs so that she can leave this stage in the manner she deserves. Our hearts will be in our mouths.
Women’s 5,000m final, tomorrow, Network 2, BBC2, 8pm