In the wake of Sonia O'Sullivan's Olympic success, little notice has been taken of the athlete who should have been in Sydney also looking for her place in Irish athletics history. Catherina McKiernan, who having made the transition from track to marathon with astonishing success, has been keeping her head low as frustration and at times incomprehension over injuries have withered her season and now make her doubtful for next year's World Cross Country Championships which are to be staged at Leopardstown race course in Dublin.

With five months remaining McKiernan's ambition at this stage is to be fit enough to run the event and in some way contribute to the Irish cause. But unless she can clear up a hip injury which continues to leave her in pain each time she runs that relatively modest aspiration will not be realised.

This year she was forced to pull out on the eve of the international cross-country race at Mallusk, Belfast, because of a stress fracture of her foot which later cost her the chance of running in the London marathon, throwing doubt on her season. A victory in a 10-kilometre race in Liverpool in April was the prelude to a disappointing half marathon in Paris in May, a race previously won by her on a number of occasions. The most recent injury then took hold forcing her to inform the Olympic Council of Ireland in July that she would not be able to compete in Sydney.

Now even the biggest event on the domestic calendar next year looks like arriving too soon.

"Right now, I don't really have plans," she says. "If you asked me two or three months ago I wouldn't even have spoken about it because of the Olympics and because I've had so many hiccups. But I'm still not training. I've still an injury. The war wounds are still there. It's not serious but I cannot train in comfort with it.

"I'd love to run in the World Cross Country but time is running out. We're talking about five months between now and then. It's a matter now of getting help and direction but it's hard to get straight answers about the injury and that's a fear. It's not like do A, B, C and then go back training. I've been going from Billy to Jack."

"Half the battle is that I now want to get back running. I got down on myself and didn't want to run for a time. Missing the Olympics was a big blow, a big disappointment for me. Because I didn't want to talk about it, it became, I suppose, a way of getting revenge back on the injury."

If McKiernan cannot run it would be a significant blow to the Irish team on home soil. Given that in 1998 she was within two minutes of Tegla Loroupe's marathon world record and rated as the top runner in the world over 26 miles, her transition was seen as an athlete finally finding her natural distance.

McKiernan has won the individual silver medal three times in the World CrossCountry and was European champion in 1994. With John Treacy winning the event twice in 1978 and 1979 and O'Sullivan claiming a 1998 double in Morocco, Ireland has in the past had phenomenal success in the event. Now it seems that a woman's team spearheaded by O'Sullivan and a fit McKiernan is highly unlikely.