Athletics: Former European cross-country champion Hayley Yelling won her third successive Cross Challenge race of the winter at the Belfast International on a snowbound Stormont course.
She made all the running in the 5.8-kilometre race to finish 25 metres ahead of the runner-up, her fellow Great Britain international Kathy Butler, who is gearing down from marathon training in an effort to qualify for the World Cross-Country Championships in her home city of Edinburgh in March.
Despite having spent Christmas struggling with 'flu, Yelling used her usual front-running tactics in the three-lap race.
She was 25m ahead of Butler and double European junior cross-country champion Stephanie Twell after the first circuit of the course, which was covered so thickly in snow that children were tobogganing on it 24 hours earlier.
The lead had extended to 40m going into the last lap, with Butler challenged by Ireland's Deidre Byrne. But using all the strength from her marathon work in the past three years, Butler produced a storming finish to reduce the margin to 25m at the finish.
"Thank goodness it wasn't any further," said Yelling. "I was feeling a bit stuffy after the 'flu but this has set me up nicely for the IAAF race in Edinburgh next weekend."
Butler's take was understandably different.
"It was a bit short," she said. "But these races are all about me getting back into short racing, to remind me what it's like."
Twell, perhaps paying the penalty for going off too hard in the early stages, finished sixth, 47 seconds behind Yelling — a little more than the margin when the pair last met at Gateshead in November.