By Cathal Dennehy,Irishexaminer.com

Copyright irishexaminer

O’Connor has already bagged three medals this year: pentathlon bronze at the European Indoors, silver at the World Indoors and heptathlon gold at the World University Games. Now it’s time for the biggest one of all.

“I’m happy with everything,” she says of her preparation. “It’s trying to hold my form as long as we can and I’m looking forward to getting out and getting started. I’ve had the year from dreams. If someone offered me that at the start of the year, I’d have snapped their hand off. This competition is just like a bonus. Let’s go out and see what I can do.” She set the Irish heptathlon record of 6487 points to win the World University title in July and that’s an obvious target in Tokyo, while a tally of around 6,600 would likely place her in the top five. From there, you just never know. There are question marks around the form of reigning world champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson, while Olympic champion Nafi Thiam has been in a bitter public spat with the Belgian federation this week.

Whatever about her rivals, O’Connor knows all she can do is perform. “I feel like there’s definitely another national record in me and that’s my goal, to go out and push that a little bit further, be as competitive as I can be,” she says.

She’s getting more used to life on the big stage. At the athletes’ hotel in Tokyo this week, the Dundalk multi-eventer got chatting to Keely Hodgkinson, the Olympic 800m champion and British Sports Personality of the Year, and a part of O’Connor still felt like a wide-eyed youngster.

“She’s an idol of mine so I’m probably a little star struck when you meet people like that and they know who you are. I’m still settling into the scene of the world’s top athletes speaking to me – as sad as that sounds. But since winning those medals, you’re on a different level and people of that category recognise you a bit more and maybe put you on the same level. It makes you feel like you belong.”

World Athletics Championships, Tokyo – Live, RTÉ Two, 11.45am; BBC Two, 10am

Irish in action, Friday (all times Irish)

9.33am: Kate O’Connor, heptathlon 100m hurdles

10.20am: Kate O’Connor, heptathlon high jump

12pm: Brian Fay, men’s 5000m heats

12.19pm: Andrew Coscoran, Darragh McElhinney, men’s 5000m heats

12.30pm: Kate O’Connor, heptathlon shot put

1.38pm: Kate O’Connor, heptathlon 200m