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By Brendan Mooney SONIA O’SULLIVAN could be ready to add a fourth world title to her CV by winning the half marathon championships in Brussels on Sunday if her assessment of her recent training stint at altitude is correct. Already with two world titles in cross-country and the world 5,000m title from Gothenburg on her long list of successes, she has prepared diligently for Sunday’s world marathon championships which she expects will bring her back into the world rankings. “I am not in the top 50 this year after my break and I need to get myself back in there,” she said. “This is a world championship and you are going to be running against the best in the world. To prepare for the event she took the family to Laguna Mountain in California where she set up a training camp along with Kerryn McCann of Australia, the seventh fastest half marathon runner in the world last year. “I got in 20 days of very good training. Right now I feel very fit and ready to race,” she said. Paula Radcliffe, winner of the title for the past two years, is recuperating from the Flora London Marathon and will not be defending her title. In fact she is scheduled to visit Gerard Hartmann in Limerick next week. But this does not mean the race will be less competitive. Susan Chepkemei, runner-up for the past two years, sees this is her best opportunity of taking the title. Yet she will go in as underdog to fellow Kenyan, Tegla Loroupe, a three-time winner of the title. The two Russians who finished behind Radcliffe in her record-breaking debut in the London Marathon, Svetlana Zakharova (2:22:31) and Lyudmila Petrova (2:22:33) are included in the field. Japan, as usual, have a powerful women’s team headed by the woman they call The Queen of the Half Marathon, Mizuki Noguchi. She finished fourth behind Paula Radcliffe in Bristol last year, posting a personal best at 68:23 and a month later she won the Nagoya half marathon in 68:28 and launched the current campaign with victory in the Miyazaki women’s road race in 68:22. She also made a winning marathon debut at 2:25:35 in dreadful weather conditions in Nagoya. When the event was last staged in Brussels, the enigmatic army corporal, Vincent Rousseau, provided the perfect result, winning in 61:06 before the home crowd. This year Belgium has two big medal chances in the former world cross-country champion and European record holder at 3,000m, 5,000m and 10,000m, Mohammed Mourhit, in the men’s race and Marleen Renders in the women’s event. Renders will be one of the favourites to lift the women’s title after her solo marathon effort in Paris last month when she won in 2:23:05. She won the Antwerp marathon in 1995 and Berlin in 1998 and her half marathon history stretches back to 1994 when she finished seventh. On March 23 she ran a new personal best of 68:56 for the half marathon when a close second to Kenya’s Lenah Cheruiyot in The Hague. The Kenyan is also on the team for Sunday. Sonia O’Sullivan was stating the obvious when she said she would be running against the best. She has run the distance twice winning the Great North Run on her own on both occasions and she has a best of 70:05. In a much more competitive atmosphere she is likely to take a huge chunk out of that time.
