It was far from the perfect goodbye but Sonia O'Sullivan's last night at the Olympics will be remembered as an oddly beautiful night in Irish sport.
Some time after ten o'clock on a balmy evening in Athens, our greatest track athlete accepted the dying of the light with a grace worthy of any Olympics.
We hoped, unreasonably, that it might be different. It did not matter that Sonia was a 34-year-old mother, lining up against women who were mere children back when she cast the longest shadow in middle distance running. It was Sonia and it was an Olympic 5,000 metres final and so we hoped that she could somehow tap into the glittering past and give us one more night that we had no right to expect.
Standing on the edge of the track against the new generation from Africa and China, O'Sullivan looked at the start as she has done on so many of these intense Olympic evenings. Vulnerable. Taut. Alone.
And last night, she was. Although she reigned briefly at the front during a crazily slow first lap, it took just three minutes to realise that this was a race beyond her.
The easy option would have been to bow out. Edith Masai of Kenya, two years older than O'Sullivan and just as proud, chose that route. Sonia, though, was always going to leave on her own terms. For 10 laps she ran around the stadium in perfect isolation, tailed off from the rest of the field. A cluster of Irish flags waved harder each time she passed by.
"The Irish supporters and the Olympic games is what got me around that track tonight," she said afterwards. "It is hard to say but that was probably my last Olympic track race. And things don't work out the way you want them too."
As she toiled, the languid stride summoning ghostly remembrances of great nights in Gothenberg, in Stuttgart, in Sydney, the race was reduced to a sprint between Meseret Defar of Ethiopia and Isabella Ochichi of Kenya. They stepped around the Irish woman as they lapped her with just two laps to race. Quickly, other runners went past also so that when the final bell tolled, funnily, it was for all but O'Sullivan.
The medal winners were hugging as O'Sullivan heard the bell salute her and she started on her last lap. By now, the crowd understood they were witnessing something rare. In previous summers, Sonia trailing in last meant tears and torment.
Last night, she managed a smile and blew a kiss towards the Irish. She crossed the line in 16.20. It was a compelling sight, O'Sullivan sauntering down the home straight that was once her territory, her place to shine and the crowd greeted her arrival as if she was a champion.
But, of course, she was that and more. If Ireland has learned anything from these Olympics, it is that she was a once-in-a-lifetime gift. At her best, Sonia O'Sullivan owned the track. On her last night, that much did not change.
