Tyrone runners lead Ireland to medals success in Italy

FIVE Tyrone runners returned home from Sunday’s European Cross-Country Championship races over a ‘brutal’ course in Italy with plenty of medals to show for their efforts.

Nick Griggs sealed silver in the men’s under-20 6,000 metres following a heroic effort that ended in dramatic circumstances as the Irish team also finished second to Britain. And the Irish senior women’s team also enjoyed a thrilling conclusion to their race to earn team bronze as Rousky twins, Eilish and Roisin Flanagan recorded identical times in 11th and 12th places, while Strabane’s Ann-Marie McGlynn also finished strongly in 31st.

Meanwhile, former Cookstown High School pupil, Grace Carson, finished a superb fifth in the women’s under-23 race in 20.35 minutes to ensure Great Britain earned team gold.

The European Cross-Country Championships couldn’t have started more dramatically with the men’s under-20 race which saw Griggs and GB’s Will Barnicoat go toe-to-toe, dropping the likes of defending champion Axel Vang Christensen of Denmark, last year’s silver medallist, Abdullahi Dahir Rabi from Norway, and Joel Ibler Lillesø, the Danish athlete who beat Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s European indoor under-20 3000m record recently, who faded to 13th.

Griggs seemed to have killed off Barnicoat’s challenge on the final lap, but just 50 metres from the line, the 17-year-old Newmills lad stumbled, giving his opponent the chance to pounce, which he gleefully took.

Such was the effort the Cookstown High School pupil had expended on the demanding course, that he vomited and was then taken to the medical centre shortly after crossing the line with a silver medal that, given time, will mean more to him that it did initially as he seemed to have the gold firmly in his grasp.

“It’s a weird one,” he acknowledged. Me and Mark [Kirk, coach] were saying afterwards in the medical tent when I was absolutely dying that I can’t be disappointed. It went absolutely perfect, it went absolutely to plan, I stuck with the lads.

“The one thing I wanted to do was to go out with an Irish vest on and go out bravely, go out fighting and that’s exactly what I did.

“But there was just a wee lapse in concentration and a few contributing factors like fatigue, me looking around too much as well, but that’s just a wee habit, and the icy ground, and I had a wee bit of a stumble and with the fatigue it completely halted my momentum.

“But if you’d have said to me last week, a month ago, at the start of the season I’d come second at the European Cross-Country Championships on that course, I would have been absolutely buzzing.

“I would have been absolutely over the moon if you’d told me European silver before hand, but there is just a hint of frustration with the way the race panned out.

“I feel like I should be sitting here as the European junior men’s cross-country champion but it wasn’t to be on Sunday.”

Prior to his trip to Turin, Griggs felt he had something of a point to prove, having finished 16th in the same event in Dublin last year and even after missing out on gold by such a slim margin, he feels he has achieved that goal.

“There were four European record holders in there and three or four European champions as well,” he added, “It was an unbelievably stacked race and I knew going into it to get into the medals or even the top five was going to be incredibly hard, but I think I proved to myself I can compete at that level.

“In my opinion I’m not a cross-country guy, I’m a track guy through and through, and I looked at this as a run out against the best guys in Europe to see what I could do and I’ve proved to myself that I’m not there to fill, I’m there to compete with the best guys in Europe.”

A short time after Griggs started the Irish medals collection, the Tyrone trio of the Flanagan twins and McGlynn continued it in the women’s senior race.

Going into the event, few gave Ireland more than a passing thought when it came to the teams who could potentially medal, especially without Ciara Mageean, who withdrew prior to the competition.

Her replacement, Eilish Flanagan, certainly took on the mantle of the Portaferry woman, producing an impressive run to cross the line simultaneously with twin, Roisin in a time of 27.38 minutes and with Mary Mulhare pipping Spain’s Carolina Robles on the line to seal 27th place, the Irish had done enough to claim team bronze but it took some time before that was confirmed.

However, after a short, agonising wait, it was announced that they had sealed the bronze medal, much to their delight.

“We were told, going into the penultimate lap that Spain had it,” explained McGlynn who finished in 28.40 minutes at the end of a gruelling marathon season.

She continued: “I knew I couldn’t do much more, I was trying my best to keep the Italian behind me and I was roaring at Mary ahead of me to keep moving, so then when we did cross we didn’t realise that Mary had passed a Spaniard on the line.

“She had heard we had come third but it was taking a while for it to come in but then we got the green light. We didn’t want to celebrate to early but it felt so good when it was confirmed.”

The Irish women’s against the odds achievement was particularly enjoyable for McGlynn, who captained Ireland to a similar result eight years previously and it has capped an already good season for the Offaly native.

“It was eight years ago when we won bronze and we weren’t on paper medal contenders,” she added.

“I had us down on paper as sixth and that was on a good day, but Roisin and Eilish went out hard and that’s what we needed, we needed someone in the single digits or someone in the early double digits and then back it up and I think it all worked out on the day and I think we surprised a lot of people.

“It closes off 2022 on an even bigger high for me. I had done the European 10K, the European Championships in the marathon and then the cross, which was huge for me but to come away with a bronze medal just tops it off., It is definitely one of those days I’ll remember.”