Champion Britton sole Irish athlete at world cross-county

FIONNUALA BRITTON will be Ireland’s only representative at the world cross-country championships in Mombasa at the end of the month.

Before going into last Saturday’s national inter-club championships in Sligo she was the only athlete who declared her intention to travel after Athletics Ireland indicated they were prepared to send only the winners of the senior men’s and senior women’s races.

Her runaway victory cemented her plans and yesterday cross-country team manager Anne Keenan-Buckley said: “It is going to be very interesting to see where she will finish in a European perspective. That’s given that the Africans are in a different class.”

“But Fionnuala ran a superb race against them in Edinburgh in January and it will be very exciting if she can repeat that.

“She is very focused and has an excellent coach in Pat Diskin. Both of them know exactly where she is going and I am sure the world championships in Kenya will be a big stepping stone for her.”

Regarding Gary Murray’s complaints about inoculations for those intending to travel to Kenya for the championships she said she had spoken to the athletes who were likely to be involved some time ago.

“We would have made arrangements for them to get inoculated or, as Fionnuala Britton did, they could have it done themselves,” she said.

“I had no complaints regarding inoculations but I did have complaints about the timing of the national championships.

“I think two weeks before the world championships was way too close. You could not run 12k and expect to run another 12k two weeks later. There should be at least a month between the events.

“I have already spoken to Paddy Marley, Chair of the Competitions Committee, in relation to next year’s championships.”

Liam Hennessy, Chair of the High Performance Committee, said that when Anne Keenan-Buckley contacted the athletes who might be involved there was no great enthusiasm from them.

“In fact Fionnuala Britton, the European under-23 silver medallist, was the only athlete who expressed an interest,” he said.

“As far as we knew Gary Murray and Mark Kenneally were going to the US and were not interested in travelling to Kenya.”

Liam Hennessy and Paddy Marley were in Lausanne yesterday to lodge Ireland’s application to host the European cross-country championships in 2009.

Last night it would appear that Ireland, along with France and Poland, are the front runners for the event.

The plan is to stage it at Santry using Morton Stadium as the centre-piece.

And there were four bids yesterday for the 2011 European indoor championships — Paris, Gothenburg, Holland and Leipzig.