ATHLETICS: A combination of injuries and the unavailability of top athletes has largely killed the Irish interest in tomorrow's Belfast International Cross Country. Yet, it will provide the first official step into senior competition for Mullingar's Mark Christie, the most promising distance talent of recent years, whose fifth-place finish at last month's European championships in Germany led the Irish junior men's team to silver medals.
The Belfast organisers have once again assembled a small, but competitive field, built mostly around some of the leading Kenyans and Ethiopians. And the Stormont Estate will again provide the picturesque course. There is, however, a distinct lack of Irish challengers in both men's and women's races. To say the sport is now suffering with numbers at that level is putting it mildly.
Only one Irish man has managed to make the top three in the last 14 stagings of the event, and that was Cormac Finnerty back in 1996.
Christie has the ability to end that barren spell, but only in a few years time. The DCU student turns 20 next Wednesday, and Belfast represents the start of a senior career which he intends on developing over time.
"I feel that my training went well over the Christmas period," says Christie, "so Belfast is a good chance to gauge exactly where I'm at right now. But it's a big enough test and should be a good race, so I'm just looking for a solid run, then take it from there for the rest of the season."
The first real target of 2005 for Christie will be the National Inter-club cross country at the end of next month, which also acts as the trial for the World Championships in France. Tomorrow's 9km race should provide good groundwork, but he's not setting himself any major targets.
"I'm looking at this year as a time to progress, rather than say I want to do this or that," he adds. "That means just building on this past year and maybe establishing myself a little more, but not trying to dominate or take on the best seniors. I do have a few small goals along the way such as the European under-23 championships this summer.
"But it's definitely a transition year for me. Hopefully, things will go well and I get a few results and then in two or three years time I can look to start dominating a few senior races. So I'll be quite cautious for a while because the senior races are in a totally different league."
Christie is joined in tomorrow's race by Danny Darcy, another of the Irish medal-winning juniors at the European championships, but Donegal's Gary Murray is the only senior team member from that event down to run. Vinny Mulvey, Mark Kenneally and Fiachra Lombard were all unavailable.
The Irish presence is equally sparse on the women's front, with American-born Jolene Byrne leading the entries. Maria McCambridge is injured, and the two best finishers of recent years, Anne Keenan Buckley (third in 2002) and Catherina McKiernan (winner in 1992 and 1993), are both retired. And while a couple of promising juniors have come on the scene, their future as seniors seems less clear than Christie's.
The men's 9 km race starts at 2.45 p.m., where the young American Dathan Ritzenhein has the ability to upset the Africans, while Ethiopia's Etalemahu Kidane appears best placed to win the women's 5.6 km race, which starts at 2.05 p.m.
