Gold medal effort to work wonders for sport

ATHLETICS:Ireland's under-23s are an exceptionally talented group and can go on to greater things, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

FIVE YEARS ago the European Athletics Federation introduced the under-23 grade to championship cross country running as a way of bridging the sometimes daunting gap between junior and senior competition.

Having conquered that grade so impressively down in the Algarve on Sunday, that’s the next challenge for the Irish men’s under-23 team – and there’s every reason to believe they’re up for it.

There’s never any guarantee of underage success transferring to the senior grade, but they are an exceptionally talented group. They had some notable credentials even before going out to Albufeira on Sunday, and perhaps most encouraging about their gold medal performance is that it was sprung from both the Irish-based system and the American scholarship route, but ultimately nurtured at home by long-serving Irish athletics mentor Br John Dooley.

Three of the six Irish team members are currently on scholarship in America: Waterford’s David McCarthy, who was top finisher in 11th, is at Providence College in Rhode Island; Dublin’s David Rooney, who finished 20th, is at McNeese State University, in Lake Charles, Louisiana; and Cork’s Ciarán O Lionáird, who ran himself into pure exhaustion on Sunday and eventually finished 76th, is at Florida State University.

The other three are all home-based: Dublin’s Brendan O’Neill and John Coghlan – who finished 13th and 34th respectively – have both come through the excellent athletics programme at Dublin City University, and Michael Mulhare from Laois, who finished 16th, is currently attending the University of Limerick.

But it was Br Dooley who helped bring them together on Sunday, in both mind and spirit. He’d worked with each of them in various other underage competitions over the years, and helped instil the belief that their time had come. He said Sunday’s gold medal performance is “going to work wonders for the sport” and there’s no doubt Irish distance running needed an injection of hope and confidence like this.

“Everyone was depressed after Santry last December,” said Br Dooley – a former Irish 1,500 metre champion, and for years associated with the athletic success at North Monastery in Cork. “In fact I said to the team manager, Ann Keenan-Buckley, that if this team did not get medals our sport was in serious trouble. I think they decided themselves they were going to win medals.

“They are six quality young men and from the moment they assembled at Dublin Airport it was clear they were on a mission. In all my time I have never worked with a more focused group. The bond between them is just incredible.”

Indeed every one of the six team members spoke about that bond, and perhaps that’s something else missing from Irish distance running in recent years. Most of them had run the junior race together at the 2007 European Cross Country, and McCarthy – who returned to Providence yesterday to start into his end-of-term exams – reckoned that bond was what essentially secured them the gold medal.

“There was a mood of this team that was just different to any other year,” said McCarthy, who for a long while was in contention for an individual medal. “Without getting ahead of ourselves, we really thought the night before we could win medals. We just felt confident, that it was going to happen. Because I’ve been racing with these guys since I was 10. We really feel more like club-mates at this stage. And close friends as well.

“I was a bit disappointed with my individual race. I had my own expectations to win a medal. But not even an individual medal would have compared to winning the team gold. That last lap, when I felt like I was dying, the sight of my team-mates behind me, and all the support we had out on the course, just kept me going. But I really feel this team can come back now and win the senior team title.”

That ambition may well begin next year when the championships are hosted by the Slovenian city of Velenje on December 11th. In the meantime O’Neill – who is a product of the famous Dundrum South Dublin running nursery – only realised the gold medal was theirs after he’d crossed the line, such was his intensity of their effort: “Speaking for myself I was just flat out running, the whole way around.

“You could hear everyone screaming at us, but I really didn’t have a clue where we were in the team. I was just focused on giving it 100 per cent.

“So when we crossed the line I really couldn’t believe we’d actually won. We’d all packed so well, four of us between 10 and 20. And to beat the Spanish and the French was great.”

NOW availableon all newsstands is the Irish Runner 2011 Yearbook, which is packed full of a reflections on the year gone and the season ahead, and includes a fascinating interview with The Irish Timesjournalist Fintan O'Toole on why he now considers himself addicted to running.