The Sunday Times reflects on Barcelona

Another step in the right direction - with a medal or two - is a reasonable target as Ireland goes through their final stretches before theis week's European Athletic Championships in Barcelona.

Since the event was first contested in 1934 in Turin, Irish medals haul remains scant with only11 returning from the 19 championships. Derval O'Rourke's spectacular 100m hurdles silver in Gothenburg four years ago remains the most recent highlight.

It's unfair to weigh the contemporaries down with the statistics of their predecessors, but with London around the corner there's feel-good whiff emanating from Catalonia right now. These championships, between the Olympics of Beijing and London, will provide dissectible mid-term reports. Barcelona will tell whether there's a continuation of improvement.

"There's a variation on ability in this squad," Irish team manager McGonagle said this week of the 33 in Barcelona. "Some are first-timers looking for experience, while others have been through the championship mill before. We've targeted a good championship where two medals and five or six finalists would be considered a success; although it's best to wait until next week to see if things are successful or not." The Irish Sports Council and the Institute of Sport have overseen the development since Athens 2004, while Athletics Ireland is now a better structured organisation. Beijing was unsatisfactory, but there have been more forward steps than back of late. Athletes have invested time and given sacrifices; putting their lives on hold as one lap runs into the next. There's no revolution; just reinforcement. Medal hopes lean heaviest upon familiar names like O'Rourke, Olive Loughnane, Robbie Heffernan, Alistair Cragg, Paul Hession and David Gillick.

O'Rourke's achievements may never match her idol Sonia O'Sullivan's, but the two Cork women are cut from the same cloth. The physiological state of O'Rourke meant that she shouldn't have competed in Beijing, rather like O'Sullivan in Atlanta, and yet both have seen sunshine through the clouds. After coming fourth in the World Championships 100m hurdles and having run faster than any Irish woman ever last year, O'Rourke saw the silver lining as she outpaced Olympic champion Dawn Harper. Tellingly for Barcelona, no European matched O'Rourke in Berlin.

In spring, the first rip of a hamstring tear was felt when training in chilly Santry, forcing a withdrawal from the World Indoor Championships in Doha. O'Rourke's best time this year was the 12.8sec wind-assisted effort in Budapest in June. Therefore, on legal times on the current calendar, she isn't topping the scales, but her eyes light up in the face of championship action just like Rudolf's nose does at Christmas.

When Loughnane won silver in the 20km walk having come under the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin; she became only the fifth Irish athlete ever to win a World Championships medal. It was proof her career continues to, like the sport, take forward strides while she tries to keep her feet on the ground.

This season, Loughnane spent June in France readying herself for heat and humidity. She missed the National Senior Track & Field Championships with a stomach bug, but injuries have been relatively kind to a woman who will be 36 when London comes around, in a sport where competitors have a more mature peaking point. Now, though, it's only Barcelona she has eyes for.

In the men's variety of the 20km walk, Heffernan is another with a case to make. With five kilometres left in Beijing, he led the race for Olympic gold, before Russian Valeriy Borchin stormed home. Eighth-place Heffernan didn't know whether to cry with joy or despair, but the make-up of both Barcelona's 20km and 50km has altered since Norway's Erik Tysse was banned this month after traces of EPO were found after a blood test in Italy.

Records state no Irishman has ever won a European track medal. Like an Irish rugby win over the All Blacks, there is an unwritten opening chapter. Cragg has arguably more possibilities than probabilities, but he has form as he showed in two 5,000m events in one weekend, one at Gateshead and the other at the Irish nationals. He will travel from Amsterdam, while the 4 x 400m men, one of three relay teams, are an outside punt for a place in the final, which, all in all, means that Irish aspirations can contain as much confidence as hope. Four years ago, Hession failed to get out of the semi-finals and then missed out on the final in the Bird's Nest having agonisingly finished fifth in his 200m semi. At 27 now, he should be ripening. Twenty-year-old French sprinter Christophe Lemaitre became the first white man to run the 100m in under 10 seconds (9.98) to win the French National Championships in Valence this month, so cameras will glare in his direction. And while he's also tipped to do well in Hession's 200m, it might provide the Galway man with an opportunity to prove his undoubted talent.

With Barcelona in mind, Gillick was the first man on the continent to breach the 45-second mark this year. Last year's sixth place in Berlin was excellent and he was fifth in the final of the 400m in Doha before his subsequent disqualification for clashing with American Bershawn Jackson. Barcelona offers a chance at redemption, where the prime threats are Kevin Borlée of Belguim and Briton Martyn Rooney, who trains with Gillick in Loughborough. "The forthcoming Olympics is always a huge incentive and London is even more so," added McGonagle, whose father Patsy Snr played soccer for Ireland in the English capital in 1948. "There's a hell of a lot of Irish athletes that are coming good right now. A lot of them have been on the circuit for while and we've pinpointed the Europeans as a championship where we have to be competing. We've continually stated it and now the challenge is to prove it."

Alan Foley