Athletics/Belfast International Cross Country:The Irish challenge in Saturday's Belfast International Cross Country was perhaps the weakest in the 31 years of the event, though it still impacted on the leading finishers. Wicklow's Deirdre Byrne posted a highly respectable third in the women's race, with Dublin's Linda Byrne, still only 21, just two places farther back.

Snow flurries the previous evening left the picturesque Stormont course covered in a white blanket, though a gradual thaw left runners with an uninviting mixture of slush and mud.

Kenya's world junior cross-country champion Linet Masai failed to make the start because of the ongoing crisis in her homeland, and that turned the race into a largely England-versus-Ireland affair.

The former European cross-country champion Hayley Yelling used aggressive front-running tactics to end up a six-second winner from her England team-mate Kathy Butler.

Deirdre Byrne ran a steady race.

"My priority for this year is to try and qualify for the Beijing Olympics in the 1,500 metres," she said afterwards, and she seems to have every chance of improving her best, 4:12.79, and eclipsing the 4:07 mark in becoming the 13th Irish athlete to qualify.

The much-vaunted British double European junior champion Stephanie Twell could finish only sixth in 22:07, while the former Irish champion Maria McCambridge was 11th in 22:19.

There were some familiar faces among the front finishers in the men's 9km race, where Uganda's Moses Kipsiro, the 21-year-old world championship bronze medallist over 5,000 metres, triumphed for a second successive year, storming clear in the last kilometre to win by five seconds, in 30:19, from the 2006 champion Barnabas Kosgei of Kenya.

Best Irishman was the recent inter-counties champion Gary Murray, even if the gap to the winner, a minute and 40 seconds, was substantial. Murray was full of running in the last lap and will feel he is ready to win the national club title again next month.