Sonia O’Sullivan is well versed in the notion that winning medals on the championship stage - more often than not her own - can cover up cracks elsewhere in the sport, the latest example perhaps coming with Sunday’s European cross-country staged at Abbotstown.
The home crowd unquestionably played their part, the home ground too, and 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 team - proved that home advantage didn’t necessarily make winning medals any easier.
O’Sullivan has high praise for the staging of the event, the atmosphere at the Sport Ireland campus arguably the best in European cross-country history: still she suggests those three medals - gold for the Under-23 men’s team, individual silver for Darragh McElhinney, silver for the Under-20 men’s team too - won’t count for much in the future development of the sport unless they’re built on at senior level.
“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.
“Even in the junior (Under-20) women, they didn’t have a great team score but they were very visible. It’s really important for the athletes to get involved in the race and to be seen to be competing. 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.”
O’Sullivan’s constructive criticism out of Sunday also comes from the fact Irish cross-country has been here before, winning Under-20 and Under-23 medals, only for many of those athletes to struggle to make any impact on the senior stage.
“There was an Under-23 team win 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, it 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, the 37-year-old placing nine, seven days after running a 2:23:58 marathon in Valencia - 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 4x1,500 relay were ahead at halfway, only to end up fourth, and O’Sullivan also questioned why that team was selected without a trial: “You can’t really pick athletes based on their track times, it doesn’t always transfer over and 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 yesterday to win that race. If there had been a trial it might have been a different team selection.”
It’s all over to Athletics Ireland now: “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.”
Sonia O’Sullivan was speaking at the launch of the Irish Life Health Runuary programme, supporting runners of all levels to run January and not let it run them, offering a four-week training plan to run a choice of distance on January 31st( 5km, 5-miles or 10-miles) . Entry is free at www.irishlifehealth.ie/runuary
