English best of the Irish

UNA ENGLISH emerged as Ireland’s leading athlete at the World Cross-country Championships staged in sun-soaked Lausanne over the weekend when she finished 16th in the short course race.

Edith Masasai (Kenya) retained the short course record she won at Leopardstown Racecourse a year earlier when she outsprinted Worknesh Kidane by one second to deprive the 21-year-old Ethiopian, who had won the long course title 24 hours earlier, of the double which Sonia O’Sullivan completed in 1998.

While Masai had six seconds in hand back then, it was almost an exact replica of the finish in Dublin last year, only another Kenyan, Jane Gakunyi, came through to relegate last year’s bronze medallist, Isabella Ochichi, to fourth place. But it was a superb performance by Una