European 5000m and 10,000m silver medallist Sonia O’Sullivan confirmed this afternoon she will run her first serious marathon in New York on November 3.

Speculation has been mounting in recent weeks and the Irish star flew to the Big Apple immediately after yesterday’s Nike 10km in London to confirm the rumours. After a training run in Central Park this morning, she is now eagerly awaiting the real thing when she takes on world record-holders Susan Chepkemei and Lornah Kiplagat.

Kiplagat added spice to the clash when she broke O’Sullivan’s two-week-old world 10-mile best yesterday, but O’Sullivan joked: “When I last raced Lornah, at the New York City Mini-marathon I was 40 seconds behind her, but now she’s only running six seconds faster than me, so I’m getting closer and I expect to be competitive on November 3.”

O’Sullivan refuses to disclose time targets, saying: “It’s more important to win the race than run a fast time. It doesn’t matter if I run 2:20 or 2:30, it’s winning that matters … although I expect to run faster than before!”

It would be a major surprise if O’Sullivan didn’t run faster than the 2:35:42 she ran on her marathon ‘debut’, when she entered the Dublin Marathon at the last minute in 2000 and used it as a training run. “That really was a late decision,” she says. “The first time it even came into my head was two weeks before the race. I was having coffee in Teddington (the London base of many leading distance runners managed by the late Kim McDonald’s KIM company) when Richard Nerurkar (the 1993 World Marathon Cup champion) happened to walk in.

“He said he was going over to the Dublin Marathon and as I was going to be there anyway to publicise the launch of my book I asked my coach Alan Storey whether I should run it. He said if I did then I’d better start training for it!

“It got a bit complicated, because people were worried it would detract from the interest in my book because people would only be talking about me running the marathon and not about the book, but I had it in my head that I wanted to run.

“I treated it as a training run and it felt really easy up to 18 miles but then it got a little harder. This time though I have been training for the marathon and I’m really looking forward to the race. With so many Irish people in New York there will be pressure and expectation, but with that comes more support … and just look how well Paula Radcliffe responded to the support she got in London.

“Paula’s season has played a part in my decision, and moving up to the marathon certainly does not spell the end of my track career. Look how well Paula has run on the track since moving up to the marathon and I still believe I can get faster over 5,000m so why should I drop the track? No matter how well I run on November 3, there is no way I will run the marathon at next year’s World Championships and no way I’ll run it at the 2004 Olympics.

“The track is still where my future lies, but running the marathon this year will add fresh motivation for me. Sometimes you get a little thought in your head and in no time at all it becomes a big thought, and I just had to run the New York City Marathon this year. The timing of the race is good, and I didn’t want to go into 2003 half-hearted with thoughts about doing my first serious marathon. I wanted to go into World Championship year with one under my belt, but it’s too early to say whether I’ll run a spring marathon.”

O’Sullivan has been in sparkling form lately, following her European 5km best of 14:58 with a 51:00 10-mile victory at the Great South Run in Portsmouth, England that lasted as a world best until yesterday, but she says: “The Great North Run will tell me a lot more about ho my preparations are going. I definitely expect to run inside 70 minutes there, maybe 68 minutes. I’ve always said the 3,000m would still my favourite distance but I’m absolutely loving the marathon training.

“When I ran the world best at Portsmouth it was only in the last mile I felt I was really pushing myself. I was just concentrating on churning out 5:10 miles and before I knew it I was at nine miles – that’s when I really worked and I ran a 4:48 last mile.”

Fellow Irishwoman Catherina McKiernan made a stunning move up to the marathon with victories in her first three attempts at the distance, including a then-world’s fastest debut of 223:44 in Berlin in 1997. Another great Irish marathon debut came when John Treacy took Olympic silver in Los Angeles in 1994, but New York City Marathon organiser Allan Steinfeld prefers to compare O’Sullivan’s first serious marathon with that of another legend.

He says: “It reminds me of 1978 when Fred Lebow invited a relatively unknown Norwegian runner to be a rabbit. It was her first marathon and she won it in a world record.” That Norwegian, Grete Waitz, went on to win the race nine times. Now there’s something for O’Sullivan to follow…