http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/magazine/2011/0730/1224301417126.html

PAUL HESSION 200m sprinter

“You can’t ignore the Olympics,” he says. “It’s too big. It’s a circus, really.” Based in Scotland, the 28-year-old from Athenry enjoyed the circus no end last time out. He won his quarter-final, very nearly breaking his own Irish record in the process, and only just missed out on a place in the final. Pasty-white sprinters from Galway don’t, in the normal run of things, come anywhere close to Olympic 200-metre finals.

Hession is changing that.

He’d have imagined, coming back from China, that there’d be a European medal in his possession by now, but he only finished sixth in Barcelona last year. “I didn’t run too far short of my best times but a couple of other lads stepped up and made progress when I didn’t. It’s so hard to get progress when you’re getting on in your career. When you’re younger, you’re improving by huge, astronomical leaps each year.

“It’s much easier to see the improvement then. As you get older, you’re talking about such small, small percentages. But you enjoy those percentages more. If I take a hundredth of a second off my personal best this year, it’ll be far more satisfying than when I took a whole second off it when I was younger. Every bit of blood, sweat and tears goes into that hundredth of a second.”

The World Championships in South Korea will be where his late summer peaks – his opening heat in Daegu isn’t until September 3rd – and he’ll hope to have his qualifying time for London nailed down in the coming months as well. “You’ve got to be positive. I’m still up there, still on the fringes of the top 12, top 10 in the world.”