Some priorities shifted even before the Irish medal winners returned home from Sunday’s European Cross-Country in Portugal. With the global event just under four weeks away there is no time to lose.
Once the annual highlight of the season, the World Cross-Country Championships have been staged biennially since 2011, with the next edition set for Tallahassee in Florida on January 10th. Irish interest, like many other European countries, has waned in recent years, although the medal success in Portugal has renewed hope and expectations.
Nick Griggs won Ireland’s first men’s individual gold in the under-23 race, the senior men won a team medal (silver) for the first time in 25 years, and there was also a first Irish medal (bronze) in the women’s under-20 race, won by Emma Hickey.
Athletics Ireland met on Monday to consider the team selections, although with no under-23 race on the global stage, Griggs is already prioritising the indoor track season, and ultimately the European Championships in Birmingham next August.
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“The main thing for me next year will be the European Championships, hopefully over the 5,000m,” he says. “I’ve got the qualifying time, but there are so many guys who could go and get that, and obviously only three can go.”
Griggs is also conscious he came out of last year’s European Cross-Country looking good, winning under-23 silver, only for a rare knee infection sustained during that race, after an early fall, forcing him to miss three months of running. It took him almost seven months to get back racing.
“I just have to stay fit and healthy, use this as a springboard into the next season, and hopefully run some fast times indoors over in America, if I can avoid injury. This time last year I got injured at these championships, but all looking good, I’ve a great team behind me, to perform at the best of my ability.”
There is another mixed relay in Tallahassee, a 4x2km race, which will again pique Irish interest, although, like Griggs, Cian McPhillips will likely be prioritising the track from early 2026.
The Irish senior men’s team have all expressed an interest in the World Cross-Country: and with Jack O’Leary (5th) Brian Fay (10th), Cormac Dalton (11th), Darragh McElhinney (16th) and Efrem Gidey (19th) all making the top-20, there’s a clear target for them to aim at.
The top three finishers made up the team score in Portugal, while the top four will count in Tallahassee. The 10km distance for senior men and women is also notably longer than the 7.5km last Sunday.
“I think it’s only upwards from here,” says Fay. “I was saying to the lads straight after the finish line that hopefully we’ll all be togging out for World Cross. If it was four to score [in Portugal], we would have won the European title, I reckon.
“So if we can go to the World Cross and try to finish as highest Europeans, that could be a once-in-50-years type of thing. We have such a strong team at the minute.”
Fionnuala McCormack may also have an interest in Tallahassee, the 41-year-old showing no signs of slowing down when finishing 10th in the New York City Marathon last month, just seven weeks after finishing ninth at the World Championships in Tokyo. Fiona Everard, 10th on Sunday, is also available, with Hickey likely to get further experience in the under-20 race too.
The purpose-built course at Apalachee Regional Park in Tallahassee will be fast, marking the first time the event is staged in the USA since 1992, where at a snowy Franklin Park in Boston, Catherina McKiernan won the first of her four successive World Cross-Country silver medals.
Ireland haven’t won a medal of any colour at the World Cross-Country since hosting the event in Leopardstown in 2002 (one year later than planned due to foot-and-mouth disease). Sonia O’Sullivan was racing just three months after giving birth to her daughter Sophie, and in finishing seventh guided Ireland to team bronze in the now discontinued short-course race.
O’Sullivan had won a long and short course double in 1998, also won a senior team silver in 1997, along with McKiernan. A medal of any colour in Tallahassee may be a long shot, but hopes are nonetheless renewed after Portugal.
