David Gillick makes his first return to competition this weekend since his hopes of a third European Indoor title in a row ended in a controversial fall in Turin six weeks ago.

The Dundrum South Dublin star is competing in the prestigious Mt Sac Relays in California tomorrow in both the 400m and a 4X400m team.

As has been the case for the last couple of years, Gillick is currently on a spell of warm-weather training in California with Nick Dakin's sprint/hurdles group from Loughborough, which also includes Irish Olympian Michelle Carey.

Another to watch at Mt Sac, the traditional outdoor season opener in the States, is rising Waterford distance star David McCarthy.

The Providence College student just missed out on a medal at the NCAA indoors last month and is racing in the 5000m at Mt Sac, with serious aspirations for a medal in the NCAA outdoors this season.

The bad news for one recent Providence graduate, the in-form Mary Cullen, is that she looks set for an extended injury lay-off after her recent heroics.

The North Sligo star finally made her long-awaited international breakthrough when taking a 3000m bronze at the European Indoors last month and was second in a gutsy performance at the Great Ireland Run two weeks ago. However, it has emerged that she has a stress fracture that will keep her out of action for some time.

Like Martin Fagan, Cullen had targeted the Cal-Berkeley meet today week (April 24) to try and get an early qualifying standard for this summer's World Championships in Berlin but those plans have had to be put on hold.

Over 20 more of Ireland's elite senior athletes, including Paul Hession, head to Monte Gordo (Algarve) in a week's time for a fortnight's warm-weather training camp.

It was feared that the Athletics Association of Ireland's (AAI) recent problems with the Irish Sports Council, their main funder, might jeopardise this year's training camps but they have been unaffected, even though there is still no white smoke from the AAI boardroom on their recent controversies, with the next board meeting due on Monday week.

Elsewhere, enterprising Dubliner Darren Spring (28), a member of Liffey Valley AC, has set up a new free photo website -- racepix365.com -- that will be of huge interest to road runners across the country.

A professional website designer who, using the 'Flickr' technology, has now brought his expertise to his hobby, Spring invites anyone who takes photos at athletics events to upload them to this website where runners are welcome to download the images for free -- though only for personal use, he has stressed.

He also encourages race directors to contact the site in advance to register their upcoming events.