It was another day to remember for Irish athletics at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Brussels on Sunday.
This morning’s papers are splashed by photographs of a mud spattered but delighted and smiling Irish U-20 cross country team
The Athletics Ireland report said that the day started with a bang for Ireland with a superb team performance in the men’s U20 race seeing five Irish athletes inside the top 30 places as they raced away to gold thanks to their first three scorers all securing top ten finishes including Niall Murphy in ninth and Jonas Stafford tenth.
The Gold Winning Team
“The team was spearheaded by the bronze-medal-winning run from Nick Griggs with Seamus Robinson (City of Derry Spartans AC), Shane Brosnan (An Riocht), and Harry Colbert (Waterford AC) all contributing to the team as they improved on last year’s silver medal.
Speaking after the race, Nick Griggs said: “It was a pretty special one. It was a really tough battle out there with the leaders up front and I wanted to win, but I can’t complain with bronze in those tough conditions given what happened at nationals.
‘We’re all Delighted’
To lead this team home to a gold is so special after the last two silvers so we’re all delighted”.
The U20 gold and silver individual medals came down to a sprint finish with Axel Vang Christensen (DEN) outsprinting Niels Laros (NED) to cross the 5,000m route in a winning time of 16:09, with Griggs following them home in 16:24.
See the full report from the Athletics Ireland site with a Click on the link here:
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