Cragg to make his mark on the world

ATHLETICS: Ian O'Riordan talks to Ireland's outstanding middle distance athlete as he prepares to step up in class

Word on Alistair Cragg is still slowly spreading. The American collegiate titles he's been stacking up at the University of Arkansas. A certain win over the Olympic 1,500 metre champion. And the frightening time he's just run indoors over 3,000 metres.

Tomorrow, in Brussels, word might begin to spread a little more quickly. Cragg runs the short-course race at the World Cross Country championships and he's got something to say: the time has come to make his name on the world stage.

Word on his background is spreading too. A greatly talented athlete, born in South Africa but raised with a strong Irish influence, from the homeland of his mother's grandparents. How three years ago he declared for Ireland and is now intent on the 5,000 metres at the Athens Olympics. How, at 23, his potential is still gloriously exciting.

Yesterday Cragg crossed over to Brussels from London, where his parents now live. He'll start the 4km short-course race knowing he's got a few things in his favour. Just last weekend he won both the 3,000 and 5,000 metres titles at the NCAA indoor championships.

"Yeah, the 4km is right bang in the middle," he says. "Should be perfect."

He knows, too, the Africans have dominated the short-course event since its introduction in 1998, but he's not afraid of them. They're no more daunting than the guys he ran against as a youngster in Johannesburg. It will be his first time running the World Cross Country as a senior (he did compete twice as a junior for South Africa), and only his second time running for Ireland, after the European Cross Country two years ago, where he finished eighth. Yet he's going for it.

"I'm trying to be a little naive about it too," he says, "knowing that I'm in good shape, and so why not go in there with big expectations? And I definitely want to get into the top 10.

"Of course I know there are one or two of the Kenyans and Ethiopians that can bury me on Saturday. But they won't all run at their best on the same day. And if I put myself up with them you never know what is going to happen. And I'm not scared of them. But I also know they pride themselves on cross country. So I've got to show a little respect, knowing that I'm not going out to run against other collegiate athletes.

"And I need to get used to that sort of competition. I want to set a mark on the international scene, and I don't want to set it too low. So I'm nervous about it, but I have to start putting a peg in somewhere on the world circuit."

Cragg's reasons for running for Ireland are simple. All of his mother's grandparents were Irish, from Killarney, Dublin and Belfast. And years before he declared for Ireland he held an Irish passport. So he'd aspired to it for many years, and when he started in Arkansas four years ago he was convinced of it. There he fell under the wing of John McDonnell, originally from Mayo and now the most successful college running coach in America.

"Ireland will be my home in the future," he says. "And I see that as a home that I can love and support, even, say, when I'm watching football and rugby. I mean, now that I'm Irish I was pretty happy about that win in the rugby over England. But then I think you'd be happy with that even if you weren't Irish."

Clearly the McDonnell influence also runs deep: "Well, he's more than just a coach, but he's also a great coach. But then he has to be more than just a coach to be as good as he is. What he taught me on the track has gone into the rest of my life, and I can see my attitude towards it has come totally from him. He's taught me to be a professional. And I'll do anything for the guy."

He'll graduate from Arkansas in May - no doubt winning one last NCAA title outdoors (he has six already). Then all thoughts turn to Athens. His 5,000 best of 13 minutes 22.07 seconds is two years old and 13:21.50 will get him to Greece.

"That's the next big step for me, the Olympics. I've spent a lot of my time trying to perform as an Arkansas athlete, and the next step will be to do that for Ireland. And I feel I've improved a lot since the 13:22. I just haven't had the races to better that time. So I'm getting itchy feet about it now. I'd like to go out and run it next week."

When he beat the Olympic champion Noah Ngeny of Kenya indoors last year he ran the perfect race. But if the 7:38.59 he ran for 3,000 metres indoors last month is anything to go by - it cracked Frank O'Mara's 13-year-old Irish record - then Cragg is in the form of his life.

"I would have to say yes, looking at my times and that. It's just I haven't done the kind of work you normally do around championships time. But I am strong, and I feel I'm ready to be in great shape. And that's exactly where I should be right now."

Brussels then, a stepping stone to a wide and wonderful future in world athletics.