WEDNESDAY. Four days since David Gillick retained his European indoor 400-metre crown but there's already something else to trouble his thoughts. He looks at his attire. A suit he bought in Thailand and probably should have ditched soon after he wore it to his graduation from DIT. That night he fell over, causing the button on his trousers to part company with the fabric and shoot off across the room.

But at the time a tailor seemed the best option and now, since he went to Loughborough in October, he's put on two kilos of muscle. The suit is again in danger, this time for more athletic reasons "I've arranged to buy a new one, " he shrugs, as he shows his gold medal to those working in the hotel that instantly recognise him.

"Honestly. I've to pick it up later. I'm going on the Late Late Show on Friday and I don't think this will cut it."

Good idea and besides, you might have to get used to wearing one, the way things are going. You'll get your money's worth out of it anyway.

"You're probably right. I already had lunch with the sponsors earlier. But I don't want to become distracted and lose focus. I've so far still to go, last week was only a bonus. Like going to Loughborough. There are days when you are nearly in tears but these are the things you have to do to get to the top and I really felt like I made a sacrifice in going there. I've come through a good bit and I don't want that to all be a waste. I don't want to get lost in a side of things away from performance."

His switch to the Leicstershire town has only been the latest change in his life. For a flat runner, he's already had to clear plenty of hurdles in his 23 years. There was the discipline of his lippy teens when his first sporting call was always Ballinteer St Johns. As a 13year-old, Gillick was playing wing-forward in a championship quarter-final. When he wasn't given a line ball he turned on the referee.

Yellow card. A few minutes later when he wasn't given a free he roared at the ref, in more forceful language, if he wanted a fog horn instead of a whistle. Red Card. On the way home it was his father who lost his temper and Gillick ended the day sitting alone in his room, grounded. It's not a lonely example either.

Later there was the struggle around a single lap of the track. There were the nerves that saw him run out of the European Under-23 Championships of 2003, long before he got near a final. In 2004 he had no grant and when he trailed in third in the national championships, funding and a career looked way off.

And when there was success, there were the mental pitfalls to stunt his growth. "After I won the indoors in '05 in Madrid, everything got to me. Things annoyed me with training. People's perceptions were wrong. It was my fault too, I didn't know how to handle it. Everyone was saying you can go win world titles now and that was never ever going to happen because there is such a huge difference between European and world sprinting. People talk about the Africans at middle and long distance. Well I'm a sprinter and the Americans and Caribbean nations are equally as tough. I found that I couldn't take the expectation and pressure. My head was wrong."

It was why psychological work started with Enda McNulty after the remainder of 2005 had been lost to injury and 2006 was swallowed by poor performance. Kaizen.

Motivation. Relaxation. Meditation. Visualisation. They all pop into his mind when he thinks of the sessions he did with the former Armagh footballer. They all popped into his head last Saturday as well.

"People never seem to know about the build up to a race, and I suppose why would they. But the hours before it could break a man, seriously. The morning was fine. I had breakfast with the lads. I was calm which was different to the last indoors in 2005 when I couldn't talk to anyone. But I felt chilled, listened to some music on my iPod, Eminem, some Irish stuff, anything upbeat. And it was the same when I went to the stadium initially. There's a warm-up area under the track with TVs so you can see what's going on upstairs. My warm-up is always an hour and 15 minutes but it's when you get asked to the call room that the pressure builds.

"It's a strange place. You go into room number one for 10 minutes and they check your numbers and your spikes, everything. Then in call room number two you get your lane and they double check some things. But in all these rooms you are in there sitting with the five guys you are about to race. Six of you in a cube. All the time you are just concentrating on your breathing and staying focused.

Visualisation. You look at the guys but you don't say much. There was one guy, the Austrian fella [Clemens Zeller who ran a PB in the final but still trailed in last], who kept standing up every few minutes and he'd shake hands with us all and say, 'Good luck, good luck, good luck'. I was laughing to myself at first, thinking this guy is happy out, but he kept at it and I just wanted him to sit down.

To leave me alone.

"Then you are brought out to the track and the women's final was on before us so you see all that. It's difficult because you are in a packed stadium, there are 5,000 people and you can feel the atmosphere and the emotion. You notice the Irish crowd and all you want to do is get out there. You do a couple of runs of the bends and you try not to look up at the crowd and then it's tracksuits off, and you're like, 'F**k, here we go. I'm into it now'. Then they call out the competitors, 'On your marks. . .'" Bastian Swillims, Robert Tobin and Johan Wissman were all out quick. Gillick was too, unable to hear the crowd over the loud thud as he hit the floor hard with each stride. As they broke at 170 metres Swillims led. Gillick knew if he was in third there was too much work to do, his crown would be placed on someone elses' head in a little under 30 seconds. He and Wissman went for second and as he put it himself, "There was no way he was getting there ahead of me. We bumped but if I had to drive him into the infield or the long jump pit, I would have." He chased Swillims around until the final bend of the final lap, always knowing he'd take him on the home straight. 45.52. Gold medal. Job done.

"Afterwards, I went nuts, did the lap of honour. I enjoyed that so much, there were so many Irish there and the more I went nuts, the more they went nuts. The media were next and there was a bit of emotion there.

There was French TV too and I don't have a word of French but I think they just wanted to get a feel for it. I was whisked away to get a medal and I was brought the whole way up to the back of the stadium and I was wrecked.

I just wanted to lie down. I went up to the medal ceremony which is the stuff you dream off. Then there was doping control. Luckily I was throwing a lot of water into me. Sometimes you can take too much and it can be too diluted so you have to sit around. Sometimes you don't take enough but I was in and out quite quickly. Then there was the night after."

That began back in his hotel and ended a world away. Some friends had come over and along with members of the Irish team they found a night club. When that closed they stumbled on a place that sold itself on opening until eight the following morning. They never made it that far. The singing of 'Molly Malone' became a little too loud and they were all thrown out.

Last Sunday. One day since David Gillick retained his European indoor 400-metre crown. He lifted his heavy head from the pillow and smiled. The feeling of a champion.