The last thing Nick Griggs is in danger of is getting carried away with his startling spate of Irish underage distance running records. As unquestionably impressive as they are, and the promise of more to come, times are moving on in other ways too.
For Griggs, who doesn’t turn 19 until December, his latest Irish under-20 record, the 3:36.09 he ran for 1,500 metres in Nice on June 17th, took over four seconds off the previous mark. He also holds the mile (3:58.51), the 3,000m (7:53.24), and the 5,000m (13:36.47) records at under-20.
In that same race in Nice, Andrew Coscoran improved the senior record, his winning time of 3:32.68 the first Irish sub-3:30 clocking. Finished a close second was Niels Laros of the Netherlands, who also ran a senior record of 3:32.89. Like Griggs, he’s still only 18.
A few nights earlier, in Oslo, Jakob Ingebrigtsen ran a new European record, the 22 year-old Norwegian running 3:27.95, the top eight finishers there all running sub-3:30.
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“It’s insane, absolutely insane,” says Griggs, “But you look at it, and you also think if they can do it, if Andrew can run national records, and I’ve no doubt he’ll run quicker, when he gets into a better race, it does give you some more impetus.
“But if eight or nine guys are going sub-3:30, in the same race, I need to be at that level in the next year or two if I want to be competing on the world stage. You can’t be intimidated by it, you have to think if I stay injury free, keep training, if everything goes well, that will be me as well.”
Perfectly grounded anyway, Griggs is fresh off his A-levels, his immediate goal being the Irish Under-20 Championships in Tullamore this Sunday, where he’ll race 1,500m. His ultimate goal for the season is to defend his European Under-20 3,000m, those championships set for Israel in August.
He’s recently switched from Mid Ulster AC in Tyrone to Candour Track Club in Belfast, working closer still with his coach there Mark Kirk, with plans in place to take a year out now and train full-time towards the Paris Olympics.
“It would mean everything,” he says. “If anyone asked me, ‘What are you going to be when you’re older?’, I didn’t even say a pro athlete. I didn’t know what a pro athlete was. I just said, ‘I’m going to be an Olympian’.
“To say I could achieve that at 19 would mean everything to me, and even if I didn’t make it next year and I made it when I was 23, it would mean the world.”
