In-form Fagan in good fettle

MARTIN FAGAN will go to the line among the favourites for tomorrow’s senior men’s race at the European cross-country championships in Brussels but the Mullingar Harrier knows it will be difficult to improve on last year’s seventh placing in Toro.

Although he failed to finish in the Beijing Olympics he has bounced back with a series of impressive runs including sixth in the Great North Run and, last month, finishing at the head of a star-studded field in the Manchester Road Race in Rhode Island.

His placing in Toro — the highest ever by an Irish runner in the senior men’s race — was eclipsed by the controversy which followed when he was refused re-entry into the US over a visa problem and had to abandon plans to compete in the Houston Marathon.