A MOST comprehensive victory at yesterday's National Championships at Whitechurch, Co Cork, confirmed Seamus Power as the country's outstanding male cross-country runner.

Power made history in becoming the first to win the national inter-county and inter-club titles in the same season. He turned the race into a procession even before halfway on the 12,000-metre journey. He would later suffer temporarily for his early ambition but the last threat to his title hopes was long dismissed as he raced across the line in 39 minutes 23 seconds.

Tom McGrath, taking over the leadership of the Mullingar team from the injured David Burke, was 20 seconds slower in second, with Noel Berkeley, beaten but unbowed, third in 40 minutes flat.

Consistency also had its reward in the women's senior race when Maureen Harrington, so often numbered among the supporting cast, came storming though to become the first Kerry athlete to take the title. Her time was 22 minutes 35 seconds for the 6,000-metre trip.

The big undulating course - runners got little help from the underfoot conditions - put a premium on strength and it showed in the manner in which Power, from the Kilmurray-Ibrickane club in Co Clare, surged to one of the most decisive championship wins of recent years.

With 15 athletes running at the head of the field, the expectation was that it would be well into the second-half of the race before the group began to break up. Instead, it began to disintegrate shortly after the 5,000 metres mark.

McGrath was the first to test the conviction of those around him, throwing in an injection of pace which took him four metres clear of his clubmate, Cormac Finnerty, Berekley, and two former title winners, Noel Cullen and Peter Matthews.

Power was then running closer to the back than the front of the leading group but within another 800 metres, he had effectively won the race with a surge which took him 5 metres clear. From that point, the rest were only seeing the back of the Kilmurray man, the first Co Clare runner to win a major cross-country championship since the celebrated Tim Smyth in the 1930s.

With 3,000 metres to go, the lead had stretched to around 150 metres but then, dramatically, be began to slow. Suffering from a stitch, he was forced to run conservatively for the next 2,000 metres, long enough to offer some hope to those strung out in the distant pursuit.

Then, almost as suddenly as they had arrived, Power's breathing problems were gone - and with them went the hopes of those who sensed that the iron man was beginning to break.

"I made the race a lot harder for myself by going when I did," said Power. "Had I hung around for another couple of laps, I could have saved myself a lot of hard running but you only have a matter of seconds to make decisions like that.

"Until I got the stitch, I was running quite comfortably and, luckily, I got myself out of trouble before anybody could capitalise.

McGrath ran a big, bold race which, on another day, might have earned him the title.

For Berkeley, fated, it seems, to finish his career without winning this championship, it was another case of so near and yet so far. Before yesterday's race, he had finished second, third, fourth and fifth in the last five years. Now he again had to settle for the bronze medal after being caught cold by Power's break.

Power's performance, no less than those immediately behind him, deserved the reward of a place in the starting line-up for the World Championship in Turin later this month. Normally, that bonus is automatic but now - in the stringent times in which we live - he must wait until a meeting of BLE's Management Committee next Friday before knowing if he will be going to Italy.

If the battle for the individual title never really caused any excitement in the closing stages, the reverse was true of the competition for the inter-club title.

Crucially, David Burke was absent through injury from Mullingar's team and it proved expensive as their fourth man, David Casey, drifted back to 30th, allowing Dundrum South Dublin to regain a title they last won in 1994.

Maureen Harrington, third in 1993 and again last year, made it a case of third time lucky when finishing strongly to beat Una English and the much-improved Tullamore runner, Pauline Curley, for the women's title.

English, who had won races in Switzerland and Italy in recent weeks, looked comfortable enough, when running alongside Harrington to half-way but once Harrington accelerated, the rest were running for the minor awards.