Spotlight is bound to catch up on Britton

On Athletics:Among the many successes of her great career Catherina McKiernan once managed to completely baffle some of Fleet Street's finest. At a press conference ahead of her 1998 London marathon victory she was asked to name a childhood hero, to which she replied, "Pat Spillane."

In the days before Google and Wikipedia this caused considerable fuss; none of the London journalists had to humility to ask who, exactly, was this Pat Spillane. They had expected to hear the name of some world-famous runner; not realising running, while a large part of McKiernan's life, was not her whole life.

That broad outlook is, it seems, one of the many traits Fionnuala Britton shares with the former champion runner from Cavan.

The 23-year-old from Wicklow is now Ireland's most promising cross-country specialist since McKiernan, who won four successive World Championship silver medals and a European gold before embarking of her short but sweet marathon career.

Like McKiernan, Britton is impossibly light-boned and thin and yet once in full stride displays vast reserves of strength and endurance.

McKiernan was famously shy of the spotlight, so too is Britton; at times their great talent for running seems like a burden.

They share the simple love of running, which we like to complicate by talk of potential medals for Ireland.

Anyway, McKiernan was 25 when she won the gold medal at the inaugural European cross-country championships in 1994.

Last year, Britton won the silver medal in the newly established under-23 division, and tomorrow, in Toro, Spain, she leads the Irish challenge in the senior women's race. She can definitely medal at this level; the only proviso being it may take another year or two.

Like McKiernan, Britton is not without ambition. During the decade or so McKiernan competed on the world stage there were several positive drugs tests involving women she had raced against, but she never let that get to her.

Shortly after Britton won silver in last year's under-23 race, Turkey's gold medallist, Binnaz Uslu, tested positive, but too late to affect the result.

In other words, Britton had been denied gold by a cheat, but you won't hear her complain about it. That stuff only creates baggage.

Britton simply loves to run. Like McKiernan, she turned down the offer of a US scholarship. She is based in Dublin City University, taking an MA in physiology.

On the track she's taken to the 3,000-metre steeplechase (which, unfortunately, wasn't around in McKiernan's day) and this summer made the World Championship final in Osaka, and her best of 9:41.36 was well inside the Olympic A standard for Beijing.

Typically, she greets this achievement with a shrug of the shoulders: "It's a bit funny, because since I was about eight, winning the Wicklow championships, people have been asking me will I go to the Olympics. No one really understands what that really means. But now when they ask I say, 'Yeah, I am.' And they say, 'Yeah, really?'"

When McKiernan was among the very best in the world, it was often put to her that it must be a little annoying to have another of the very best, Sonia O'Sullivan, from the same country, around at the same. In fact McKiernan would not have had it any other way; it was a relief to have someone share the spotlight.

Similarly, Britton is thankful not to be the only Irish medal hope in Toro tomorrow. The men's under-23 team, who finished fourth last year, are effectively the same outfit in Mark Christie, Joe Sweeney, Andrew Ledwith and Mick Clohissey, and they'll be disappointed not to medal.

Both junior teams ooze potential, especially in John Coghlan and Brendan O'Neill, and the ffrench-O'Carroll twins, Rebecca and Charlotte.

Of the four team medals Ireland have won in these championships two have been at junior level, and there's little reason these juniors cannot win another tomorrow.

For whatever reason, the Irish senior men have never been at full strength for this event. Mark Fagan is in the thick of heavy marathon training and looks capable of a top-10 finish, and national champion Gary Murray promises an all-out effort that could bring him close to the same. Alistair Cragg is the notable absentee, understandable given his collapse in Osaka, and yet he remains one of the few true potential medallists on the men's side.

McKiernan was always brilliantly coy about predicting medals, and that's something we'll have to get used to again with Britton.

"I'm confident I can perform on the day," she says about tomorrow's race, "but of course it depends on how well everyone else performs. It's not something you really think about. You just go out trying to improve. But I suppose ultimately, yeah, you want to be the best."

But if she stays healthy and injury-free then some day - maybe not tomorrow - she can certainly share one further thing with McKiernan: European cross-country gold.