Cork in running for 2005 Euro cross-country

CORK is among the front-runners to host the European Cross-Country Championships in 2005 — the year the City will hold the status of European Capital of Culture.

The application was confirmed yesterday by Liam Hennessy, International Secretary of the Athletics Association of Ireland, who said he was confident their package was comparable to anything submitted by the other applicant nations and better than most.

Also pushing for the event will be Portugal, Spain, Italy, Austria and The Netherlands. The applications were submitted before the end of February but it will be next October before the successful candidate is announced at the annual Calendar Congress. Mr Hennessy said: "But I'm pretty confident that we will figure prominently in the running and the event will be held in Cork fitting in nicely with the synergies of the European Capital of Culture.

"We have met a number of people in Cork, including City Manager Joe Gavin, John Kennedy, chief executive of the Cork 2005 European Capital of Culture, and Michael Lane, manager of Cork Racecourse, as well as Niall Reddy, chief executive of Bord Fáilte, Niall Cogley, RTÉ's head of sport and John Treacy, chief executive of the Irish Sports Council.

"We found in Cork that they were enthusiastically embracing the event. We looked at various locations including Fota but everything is pointing towards Cork Racecourse in Mallow, where we found the facilities to be excellent. Everything is in situ there."

He said they now had to pin down areas where potential funding for the event would come from.

A delegation from the EAA is due to visit Cork over the coming months.

"I think they will be very impressed," Mr Hennessy insisted. "But what is also a big plus in our favour is the fact we will be moving into an area with a very strong sporting tradition. We know from experience that we are guaranteed huge public support for the event."

The last major athletics event to be held at the Racecourse in Mallow was back in 1979 when the World Military Cross-Country Championships featured several runners on their way to the World Cross-Country Championships in Limerick, where John Treacy retained his title.

Meanwhile, Karen Shinkins, bronze medallist at last year's European Indoor Championships, has arrived in Ireland en route to the World Indoor Championships, which will be staged in Birmingham over the coming weekend.

"We have not seen Karen in action so far this season as it would appear she has been preparing specifically for this event but she has been racing," her former coach Jim Kilty said. "But she is a class act and when you get into a final anything can happen."

Paul McKee and David McCarthy will be hoping to get through to the concluding stages of the 400m while Ciara Sheehy in the women's 200m and Derval O'Rourke in the 60m hurdles are others who will be the focus of attention.

Kilty said: "Her training would indicate Derval is ready to break 8.10s. I was disappointed with her run in the UK Championships when she left herself short at the fourth and fifth hurdles but we have worked very hard on attacking it from three strides out and that has made the big difference. I would confidently predict that there is more in the tank and I would be looking forward to her making it to the semi-finals."

Ciara Sheehy picked up an injury before the season started so she was always going to be slow away. She ran 23.93s at the warm-up in Birmingham, got it down to 23.70s and then ran an Irish 200m record at 23.17s.

"Her confidence is back and she is running better than ever before," Jim Kilty said. "In fact I would hope that she will beat 23.10. The only problem is that she is running very early in the morning."

Daniel Tobin (Clonliffe Harriers) has withdrawn from the 4 x 400m squad with an injury. He has his sights on the junior championships later in the year.

Breda Dennehy-Willis had a race a the weekend and will run over 8km next weekend when the selectors will be meeting to select the team for the world championships.