Leevale return to winning ways

They may have waited all of a decade to reclaim the Cork county senior cross-country crown from East Cork, but Leevale did it in style yesterday at Carrignavar and for good measure, the city club also won the women’s title along with providing the winners of the two individual races.

While Mark Hanrahan and Lizzie Lee were the firm favourites, the men’s team title provided the main excitement and, from the gun, Leevale showed they meant business as Hanrahan and triathlete Bryan Keane set a fierce pace.

Going out on the second lap of five, Hanrahan opened a six-second gap on his clubmate with James McCarthy and Sean McGrath running strongly for East Cork in third and fourth.

With a lap to go, the strong running Hanrahan was a comfortable 17 seconds clear and he continued to increase his margin to cross the line 30 seconds ahead of Keane.

McCarthy and McGrath held their positions with Chris Harrington finishing a solid fifth for Leevale.

Tim O’Donoghue of East Cork also had a great run to take sixth and then the attention turned to the fourth scorer and here former juvenile star Eric Curran proved the trump card for Leevale as he took sixth place, giving them the title on 15 points, 11 ahead of East Cork.

For Mark Hanrahan, it was his fifth title in six years, but the first time he has featured on a winning team. “It was a nice enough course, Bryan stayed with me for a while but I’m delighted to be on a winning team at last,” said Hanrahan, who now hopes to make the Irish team for the European Championships next month.

It was only Keane’s second running race back after a cycling accident. “It was rough enough, but I ran for the team. I hope now to do the inter-counties and then I have a few early season triathlon races in South America,” said the full-time triathlete.

Lizzie Lee and Claire Gibbons-McCarthy had their expected battle in the women’s race with the defending champion moving away over the second half to cross the line with 100m to spare over the St Finbarr’s athlete.

“I’ve now won it four years in a row, but I’m more delighted that we won the two team titles today,” Lee said.

“I ran the Gerry Farnan race two weeks ago felt awful so I changed the training a bit and felt terrific today.”