Open field can spark Mageean medal run
If the 18-year-old Portaferry girl succeeds, she will become the first Irish junior woman to figure, while there are also podium hopefuls in former under-23 silver medallist Fionnuala Britton, and what has to be regarded as our best ever men’s U23 team, which is led by Ciarán O Lionáird and David McCarthy.
Unlike the past three years when Stephanie Twell of Great Britain and Karoline Bjerkeli Grovdal from Norway justified favouritism, there is no standout in this year’s junior women’s race, although five of last year’s top 10 from Santry will feature.
Mageean, then a 16-year-old debutant, finished 17th in the European cross-country championships in Toro and last year she produced what was Ireland’s second best performance of the day by finishing ninth — Mark Kenneally was seventh in the senior men’s race — in Santry. She has gone from strength to strength since.
After smashing every schools record available to her she went on to win a silver medal in the 1500m at the world junior championships in Canada, where the new national junior record she set (4:09.51) was the second fastest time by a European this year.
She put the finishing touches to a productive track season by making the final of the women’s 1500m at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi and her performance in the snow at last month’s inter-counties cross-country championships in Derry showed that she has lost none of her edge.
If there is to be a favourite tomorrow it has to be last year’s silver medallist, Gulshat Fazlitdinova, an 18-year-old from Bashkortostan who holds the Russian 5,000m junior record at 15:45.08.
Mageean has to be fancied too over a distance that is ideal — a sharp 3,970m comprised of a 270m run which takes them into a short lap of 500m and then two laps of a relatively flat 1600m circuit.
Britton was the last Irish athlete to make the podium at the European cross-country championships. The Wicklow woman took the silver medal in the U23 race in the snow-clad hills north of Milan in 2006.
Since then her career has been punctuated by illness and injury but she has shown promising flashes of her best form this season, especially when finishing fourth in Torres Vedras in Spain. Any improvement on that run will put her in the medal mix.
Last year, Great Britain’s Hayley Yelling-Higham came out of retirement to reclaim the title with an astonishing display of front running around Santry Demesne, and she will become the first woman to win the title three times if successful tomorrow.
Her form to date has not been exceptional, although she was ill when she finished seventh in the UK trials last month.
Two of the three women who finished behind her in Dublin, bronze medallist Adrienne Herzog from Holland and Portugal’s top finisher, 2008 silver medallist Jessica Augusto, will also be in action.
The home challenge includes Dulce Félix, who was sixth in Dublin, and marathon specialist Marisa Barros, athletes who were second and third to Augusto in Torres Vedras last month when Britton finished fourth.
The Irish U23 team featuring McCarthy and O Lionáird, as well as another Irishman based in the US, David Rooney, has a medal look about it.
Brendan O’Neill, now back to his best, fellow Dubliner John Coghlan and the teak tough north Laois man, Michael Mulhaire, also have experience at this level.
O Lionáird finished 18th in the NCAA championships in Indiana after winning his regionals while Rooney was 50th in the nationals after finishing fourth in his regionals.
McCarthy, from west Waterford, finished third in the highly-competitive Manchester Road Race in Connecticut to put the finishing touches to his preparations.
Sergey Lebid, now 35, is the only runner to have competed in every European cross-country championships since 1994 and will be bidding for a sensational ninth senior men’s title tomorrow, when Joe Sweeney will lead Ireland’s challenge.
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