Britton fixes medals-push on Olympics

Fionnuala Britton’s brave bid to win a medal at the European Athletics Championships in only her second ever 10,000m race fell narrowly short in Helsinki today.

The event was won by Dulce Felix of Portugal.

European Cross-Country champion Britton had led for much of the opening half of the race, as part of a lead group of 10 that also included British veteran Jo Pavey, Sabrina Mockenhaupt of Germany and fellow cross-country medallist Gemma Steel.

By the time that group had been whittled down to seven, Felix pounced around the midway point to shoot off towards glory – and no one else came close.

Britton kept her head up for as much of the race as possible, at one point overtaking Pavey into third with five laps to go, trying to chase down Ukrainian Olga Skrypak in second.

Pavey and Skrypak made further ground as Britton started to fall back in the final laps, with Felix enjoying an impressive 50m victory in 31:44.75, while Pavey edged out Skrypak for silver. (31:49.03 to 31:51.32)

Britton came home 14 seconds outside the medals in 32:05.54.

Despite the high finish, and it only being the second 10,000m race of her life, Britton was unhappy at not winning a medal, and immediately set her sights on setting that right in the Olympics.

"I’d like to put this behind me and move onto the Olympics," she said. "It’s such a big event, it’s something to look forward to, and it’s good because at least I don’t have to wait until the next Championships next year.

“I have something to look forward to in a few weeks time to put it right. The planning starts now. I’ll cool down, go home, train and go to the Olympics.”

Britton has pushed the tempo herself for so long, but felt afterwards that wasn’t the right strategy.

She said: “I didn’t really want to do the work but no one else was going to do it, so I had to do it. But I didn’t do it properly…If I had done I would have won a medal.

“When I was in front, I should have pushed on more, instead of having seven people sitting on me.

“If it was only three, I would have been more comfortable as I would have thought about medals then.”

Britton has run in the steeplechase at previous track Championships, alongside her cross-country heroics, but found the idea of so many things happening at once in the stadium unusual: “I did hear some people shouting up there that it was just like the cross-country again and I kept telling myself ‘It is, it is!’

“But every time I looked up at the big screen that was either a shot-putter there or pole vaulters shouting up to their coaches. They managed to take their poles away in time though!”

Elsewhere, there were two shock victories in the 4x100m relays for the Dutch men and German women.

An even bigger shock saw Norway’s Henrik Ingebritsen win the men’s 1500m in a blanket finsh ahead of European U23 champ Florian Carvalho.

Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie retained his pole vault crown as 2009 world champion Anita Wlodarczyk of Poland grabbed the women’s hammer crown, and Croatian Sabine Perkovic won the discus.

And Turkey continued their golden spell by winning their fourth European title in 24 hours through Asli Cakir-Alptekin in the women’s 1500m.

Despite crowds of only 22,000 for the evening sessions, the awkwardly tight track and the obvious TV clash with Wimbledon, the Tour de France and Euro 2012, European Athletics chief Hansjörg Wirz announced he was pleased with how Helsinki had panned out with the earlier date in the calendar and the new two-yearly format.