Just four individual athletes will represent Ireland at next month’s World Cross-Country Championships in Tallahassee, Florida after the hopes for senior team selections failed to materialise.
Despite last Sunday’s record medal haul at the European Cross-Country in Portugal, only Brian Fay (senior men), Fiona Everard and Niamh Allen (senior women) and Noah Harris (under-20 men) will make the trip to the global event on January 10th.
Several priorities had shifted promptly even before the Irish medal winners returned home from Portugal, but there were hopes for a senior men’s team after they won silver medals, and possibly another mixed relay too.
Once the annual highlight of the season, the World Cross-Country Championships have been staged biennially since 2011. Irish interest, like many other European countries, has waned in recent years, although the medal success in Portugal had renewed hope and expectations.
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Three of the four Irish athletes will make their World Cross-Country debut. Fay finished 10th last Sunday, the Raheny man and Irish 5,000m record holder also winning the national title last month.
Everard returns to this stage having finished 60th in the senior women’s race in 2024 Belgrade. The Cork woman also finished 10th last Sunday and likewise won the national title.
Fellow Cork woman Allen joins Everard in the senior women’s race, and finished 10th in the European event last year. Wicklow athlete Harris, in his first year of a running scholarship at the University of Tennessee, will be the sole interest in the under-20 races.
Nick Griggs won Ireland’s first men’s individual gold in the under-23 race, leading the team to gold on Sunday, and there was also a first Irish medal (bronze) in the women’s under-20 race, won by Emma Hickey. 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.
There is another mixed relay in Tallahassee, a 4x2km race, but with Cian McPhillips and Andrew Coscoran also turning their attention to indoors, there wasn’t sufficient interest there.
Jack O’Leary (5th), Cormac Dalton (11th), Darragh McElhinney (16th) and Efrem Gidey (19th) all made the top 20 in Portugal, but O’Leary and Dalton are next eying some road races, including the Valencia 10km on January 9th.
The top three finishers made up the team score in Portugal, 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.
Fionnuala McCormack wasn’t available for selection, and Hickey also opted out of running the women’s under-20, meaning there will be no Irish representation in that race.
Ireland have not 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.
