For many years it seemed winning medals on the championship stage – more often than not by Sonia O'Sullivan – covered up cracks elsewhere in Irish athletics, and O'Sullivan suggests there may still be a lesson in there after Sunday's European Cross-Country staged at Abbotstown.
There's no denying the successful hosting and for many Irish runners outcome of the event, still Ireland's three-medal haul, topped off with team gold in the men's under-23 race, might well have been more. Three fourth place finishes – beginning with the mixed 4x1,500m relay, where at halfway Ireland were well in front, plus the men and women's senior teams – proved home advantages don't necessarily make winning medals any easier.
O'Sullivan has high praise for the atmosphere at the Sport Ireland campus, arguably the best in European Cross-Country history, only those three medals won – gold for the under-23 men's team, individual silver for Darragh McElhinney, silver for the under-20 men's team – won't count for much in the future development of the sport unless they're built on and carried through at senior level.
One reference is the Irish men's under-23 team from 2010, who also struck gold in Albufeira in 2010: all four of that scoring quartet struggled to make any impact on the senior stage for a variety of reasons.
“There was a great buzz and energy about the place, and I think shows you how much important cross country is to Ireland, and we’re good at it,” says O’Sullivan. “It needs to be motivation for people to do something about it, to actually use that to continue with the momentum that was going from the junior (Under-20) boys’ race – they were out the front and helping to push the pace along, they really looked like they belonged.
“Maybe some didn’t make it as far as they needed to in terms of delivering the high result they looked like they’d get at the start but you have to build on that, go back, review and plan to be better the next time.”
Debrief
Bridging that gap between under-20/under-23 to senior level is no straightforward task, no matter what the sport, and for Athletics Ireland, O’Sullivan suggests, it begins with a full and proper debrief of Sunday.
“The sooner you can have a debrief of the whole event the better, pick out things that didn’t quite work out, areas we could have done better, and let the athletes know that as soon as possible, rather than putting that aside and celebrating the medals and the great performances. You’ve also got to unearth the performances that were good, but just not good enough. Was there something we could have done this year, and if so to make sure you do that next year.
“An under-23 team won in 2010 and that was really exciting at the time but there was nothing ever really came of it, and even the under-23 girls winning silver last time, I suppose Róisín and Eilish (Flanagan) were on the senior team so that was positive but there seems to be, there’s no continuation or momentum that goes on from the positive results.
“It just peters away and then it’s like starting all over again every year. There needs to be some sort of cross country squad setup so that people are in the squad and feel like they have a chance to be on the team.
"People have to be honest. If they're picked for the team and they're not fit enough then you shouldn't take your place, you should give it to somebody else. The best team should be picked, doesn't matter where they're based. There was evidence of that with the men's race - Barry Keane didn't run as good as he had been running at the NCAA cross-country, but then he ran a fast time and broke the Irish record indoors (13:25.96 5000m in Boston) just a week later so there's evidence there he could have been on that team yesterday."
O’Sullivan also suggests that as impressive as Fionnuala McCormack was, the 37-year-old placing ninth, seven days after running a 2:23:58 marathon – the best-paced senior woman or man – her younger team-mates might have drawn more inspiration.
“Fionnuala was fantastic, she got right in the mix. You feel like if you were the other senior girls, you should be keeping up with Fionnuala, she’s running on tired legs, ‘we’ve got to at least keep up with her’. Fionnuala put herself in that top-10 position very early on. She was fantastic yesterday and proved what a durable athletes she is to do that.”
The mixed 4x1,500m relay team were ahead at halfway, only to end up fourth, and O’Sullivan wonders why that team was selected without any trial: “You can’t really pick athletes based on their track times, it doesn’t always transfer over, some athletes are very good at running at cross-country and some are not. It’s a different event and that was a lost opportunity to win that race. If there had been a trial it might have been a different team selection.”
One definite lesson for next year, perhaps.
*Sonia O’Sullivan was speaking at the launch of the Irish Life Health Runuary programme, which offers a four-week training plan to run a choice of distance on January 31st (5km, 5- or 10-miles). Free entry at www.irishlifehealth.ie/runuary.
