Last year’s World Cross Country double winner, Sonia O'Sullivan is expecting her first child in the summer. A statement issued yesterday by the Irish Athletics Federation BLÉ said the athlete was delighted to make the announcement.
O'Sullivan has been living in Melbourne with her Australian partner, Nick Bideau, an athletics manager, since November. She had gone there to prepare for the new athletics season.
O'Sullivan, who will be 30 in November, later abandoned plans to go to Falls Creek in northern Australia for altitude training and last month it was announced that she would not defend her world cross-country titles in Belfast next month.
It is not yet clear if O'Sullivan will return to Ireland for the birth of her child, understood to be expected in June, but it is believed BLÉ plans to invite her to be part of its official delegation at the championships in Belfast. O’Sullivan had announced that she planned not to run at all in 1998 because she believed her athletics career could benefit from a long rest. "I have been running competitively, pretty well non-stop, since 1990, and there comes a time when the batteries need to be recharged." But she still planned to make a comeback in 2000 with the aim of winning an Olympic gold.