Host bid plan for European cross-country champs

ATHLETICS IRELAND could host the 2009 European cross-country championships.

The chairman of the High Performance Committee, Liam Hennessy, met with European Athletics chiefs in San Giorgio su Legnano at the weekend to discuss a possible bid.

Said Hennessy: “I will be putting proposals before the Bord this week and I would hope that they will receive a favourable response.

“I have discussed the possibility of hosting the event in Ireland, possibly Santry, in 2009 and the reaction was very positive. Having said that, everything is going to depend on how we will finance such an event and the amount of funding that will be available.”

A bid to bring the event to Cork as part of the European Capital of Culture activities failed due to lack of government funding. At that time it was felt that Athletics Ireland were all but guaranteed the championships to be hosted at Cork Racecourse in Mallow.

Hennessy believes Santry would be the ideal location after watching a very successful six-race programme at the Milan venue.

The longest serving member of the Irish federation, he has been an ardent supporter of European athletics throughout his administrative career and has always been in favour of sending the biggest possible representation to the championships. Ireland, too, is regarded as a cross-country nation going back to the 1930’s when Tim Smythe won the world title in Leopardstown.

Leopardstown also hosted the world championships in the 1960’s and again in 2002, while what was then the Limerick Racecourse hosted the 1979 championships when John Treacy retained his world title before a crowd of more than 20,000 at Greenpark.

While Fionnuala Britton’s silver medal may have glossed over some disappointing performances, there were a lot of positives to be taken from the championships last weekend. Martin Fagan and Rosemary Ryan had to withdraw from the senior teams when they came down with food poisoning.

And those teams were already depleted, with Alistair Cragg and Gareth Turnbull not available and the likes of Maria McCambridge and Jolene Byrne absent.

As regards the junior men’s team, the newly crowned national inter-counties champion, Cathal Dennehy, fell early in the race and never got back into contention, while Ciaran Ó Lionaird suffered a bad fall. His shoe was almost pulled off and, when he eventually stopped to remove it allltogether, it was the end of his challenge.

“My legs were going nowhere after that. I was just sliding around,” he said.

Mark Christie, too, was bitterly disappointed with his performance in the under-23 men’s race and he will be out to do better when he lines up for the Belfast international at Stormont next month.

Joe Sweeney, a scholarship student at UCD, led the Irish team home in 13th position with Christie 19th and Andrew Ledwith, having just his second race in a year, finishing 24th.

That they missed the bronze medals by just eight points despite their problems is indicative of the strength at this level. The entire U23 team will be available for next year’s championships in Spain.

Anne Keenan-Buckley, who ran in the world championships 13 times and the Europeans six times, stressed the importance of getting athletes to the line fit and healthy.

“Of course there are some things you cannot foresee,” she said. “Look at what happened in the space of 12 hours this weekend, when we lost Martin Fagan and Rosemary Ryan through illness. There is nothing you can do about something like that other than hope it does not happen.”