2012 Olympics

Ireland is about to send its strongest ever team to an Olympics but one of the female stars of the squad gave us all a fright yesterday.

With David Gillick not making the grade this time, Ireland’s most experienced track and field athlete at the Olympics should be hurdler Derval O’Rourke.

The Cork woman has a fantastic record at major championships and after a disappointing run at the Beijing Games four years ago, we know she is determined to avenge that in London.

However, those plans were thrown up in the air yesterday due to injury. O’Rourke’s back went into spasm as she warmed up to compete in the 100m hurdles at the Woodies DIY national championships yesterday. It forced her to withdraw from the race.

Her coach, Sean Cahill, is quoted in today’s Irish Examiner and he, like us, was trying to look on the bright side.

"She came out here, really looking forward to racing, and everything going to plan," he said. "She was doing her warm-up, and had done 42 minutes of her 45-minute warm-up and was about go over one last hurdle flat out. Suddenly her back went into spasm."

"To be honest it did not look good but, like I said, she appeared to be a little bit better after treatment. She will now be assessed and our best hope is that it’s something neural, a trapped nerve. It there’s a muscle pull or tear in there then obviously that’s not good.

"We just don’t know. It’s fingers crossed, but she’ll be back with the physio first thing in the morning, and we’ll see what’s the assessment then.

"All she was can do is go home and have an ice bath, and take some anti-inflammatory tablets."

As for O’Rourke, she was more positive, calling the issue “no major drama” on her blog and she stated that she plans to run next Saturday.

We're going to go with Derval's optimism...