ATHLETICS / May Sportswoman of the month Award: No doubt there are plenty of people that will need further convincing but Sonia O'Sullivan can still win an Olympic medal. At the age of 34 her best years might be behind her and last year's World Championships came close to the lowest point of her career and yet few names remain more revered in women's 5,000 metre running.

That's not based on some whimsical theory. Over the month of May she hinted on several occasions that not all the old spring is gone from her legs. If everything goes to plan over the weeks ahead then Athens on the night of August 23rd will have O'Sullivan in another Olympic final, ready to take on the best of them.

And though she did race sparingly in May, the results were enough to put her in the mix for the Irish Times/Mitsubishi Electric Sportswoman of the Year award.

Starting with her fastest ever 5,000 metres season debut and finishing with a brilliant victory over the world 10,000 metre champion, O'Sullivan has in fact rarely enjoyed a more encouraging start to the summer.

When on the first Saturday in May the results came through from a small meeting staged overnight at Stanford University in California, a number of Irish athletes featured prominently. Cathal Lombard (10,000 metres) and Alistair Cragg (5,000 metres) both achieved the desired qualifying times for Athens, and O'Sullivan's victory in the women's 5,000 metres in 14 minutes, 58.43 seconds seemed relatively straightforward.

But considering it was her first serious race since recovering from the stress fracture sustained in late January, and she'd never in fact opened the season any faster, it proved a more telling sign of the good things to come.

Having returned to her London base, she was back on the track for a mile race on May 6th, staged in Oxford as part of the 50th anniversary of Roger Bannister's four-minute mile. She won that in 4:27.79.

That Sunday she moved north to Scotland and finished second to Berhane Adere of Ethiopia, the world 10,000-metre champion, in the Balmoral 5km road race, but only after doing most of the front running.

So it was to the high point of May 23rd, when she out-kicked Adere in the Great Manchester 10km road race, winning in 32 minutes, 12 seconds. Adere rarely suffers a defeat like that.

"In a way I designed that month as a break from the training," explained O'Sullivan, speaking from her London home yesterday.

"I'd done a few weeks of quite hard training at altitude in America and before I got into the more specific track training, I wanted to have a month where I could try out a few different things and see exactly where I was.

"And that's why I did a bit of everything, on the track and the road, and some faster races and some slower ones with a faster finish.

"I wanted to make it a testing time as well. It all worked out good, and now I'm back into the training again, and hopefully I can move forward again for the next few races."

Running so fast in her opening race of the season was particularly satisfying; out-kicking the world champion was a little more planned.

"Yeah, the 14:58 if anything was the most surprising. I knew I was quite fit and expected to run well, but at the same time you never know exactly how the first race will work out. So it was really nice to come out of that with such a positive result.

"In Manchester, though, I knew Adere was very fit, so it was a question of trying to find a way to beat her. I decided on a plan of action, and stuck to it, and thankfully that worked out perfect. And I think it proved to me that if I decide to do something and stick to it, then it can work out. Hopefully I can repeat that throughout the summer, and especially in Athens."

O'Sullivan will continue to race sparingly in her final countdown to Athens. She'll be home in Cork on July 3rd for possibly her last 5,000 metres before the Games, and after that will work on fine-tuning her speed - and reinforcing her confidence.

"I know I'm still in as good a shape as I've ever been," she added.

"A lot of it now depends on the people I'm competing against and the kind of shape they're in. That's the one thing I can't control. I can only get there in the best shape I can and do the best I can.

"If everything goes your way in situations like that then more often than not you win the race."