ATHLETICS: Despite another untimely and worrying setback, Sonia O'Sullivan remains committed to running the 5,000 metres at Saturday's Cork City Sports. Her poor showing in Sunday's Gateshead Grand Prix, where she struggled in a fairly ordinary 1,500 metres, has clearly shaken her Athens Olympic countdown, and yet, for now at least, that's being put down simply as a bad run.

Cork marks O'Sullivan's last planned 5,000 metres before the Olympics, the event she is still sticking to for Athens. The organisers have assembled a reasonable field and will include a pacemaker, but it remains to be seen how quickly O'Sullivan can turn around this latest drop in form.

Without doubt the Gateshead run didn't go to plan. O'Sullivan was dropping back after 700 metres and eventually trailed home in 10th place, her four minutes 15.59 seconds some way off Britain's Kelly Holmes, who won in 4:06.83.

One theory behind her poor form comes from another Cork athlete, Cathal Lombard, who endured an even more frustrating run in Gateshead. He soon found himself off the pace in the men's 3,000 metres and dropped out around the 2,000-metre mark.

"There is a strong possibility that this is to do with the after-effects of altitude training," says Lombard, who on April 30th in Stanford, USA, lowered the Irish 10,000-metre record to an impressive 27:33.53.

"There are in fact very few studies done on what happens in the weeks after altitude training. But I know I was training at altitude in America in April, the same time as Sonia, and we both ran well in Stanford and then in the Manchester road race just after that.

"But there does seem to be a period later on when your performances come down, something you can't really negate unless you stay at altitude. It's something my coach Joe Doonan is sure happened several times when he was working with Catherina McKiernan, that the body does go through a series of changes as a result of the altitude training, but that it does then come back to where you want it."

Lombard last week had a blood test, which suggested some difficulties might arise.

There was, he says, a definite imbalance in components of the white blood cells, or more specifically the lymphocyte and neutrophil count.

Rather than risk another run, Lombard has abandoned plans to race the 5,000 metres at the Rome Grand Prix on Friday; instead on Thursday he will return to altitude training in St Moritz for the next four weeks, this time carefully coinciding his return to suit Athens.

"I'm not really concerned about this," adds Lombard, "because the Olympic 10,000 metres remains the only race that matters.

"I've still been getting in the training and it's not like I'm injured. Things aren't going badly."

Mark Carroll, who took sixth in the 3,000 metres at Gateshead in 8:06.05, will race the 5,000 metres in Rome before also spending time at altitude in St Moritz.

Also due to run in Rome is Alistair Cragg, who has based himself in London for the summer since finishing at the University of Arkansas.

The organisers in Cork are still hopeful he will run the 1,500 metres on Saturday but have yet to receive final confirmation.