ATHLETICS:There can be no resting for those who hope to fulfil their potential and Ireland's European Cross Country champion deserves her triumph, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

2012 ALREADY – and we all know what that means. The old five-ringed circus is coming to town, or at least the next town over, and to help trumpet its arrival, help get us in the mood, how about one of those much-loved running quotes?

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or a gazelle – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

Somebody, somewhere, somehow has attributed this to Roger Bannister. It could be he was horribly misquoted, but I can say with near certainty that no way could a man of Bannister’s intelligence and indeed athletic prowess have come up with anything of such ridiculously dubious thinking.

Even without his medical grounding, Bannister would probably have known that neither gazelles nor lions are up early in the morning: gazelles don’t actually go to bed at all, but rather snooze for a few minutes throughout the day, and lions typically hunt at night, or at least not around sunrise.

As it turns out, gazelles are probably quite safe around lions when the sun comes up.

Which reminds me: I was in Africa for a few weeks recently and never once saw a gazelle or a lion running in the morning – although I did see loads of people, especially around the Great Rift Valley, where anyone with even the slightest ambition of running in the London Olympics is up and out at 6am for the first of their three daily training sessions.

On that note, perhaps a better quote to fire off 2012 would be the simpler version: “To have any hope of winning anything in the Olympics you better be running when they sun comes up.”

Truth is most runners have always known this, that the only excuse for missing the morning run is pure laziness. Those who prefer the odd lie-in will never understand the true meaning of total dedication.

So it came as no surprise whatsoever to hear that Fionnuala Britton was out running at sunrise the morning after winning the European Cross Country in Slovenia last month. She might well have rewarded herself with a little lie-in, especially given she had two flights and three bus journeys to get home later that day, but Britton has never known anything other than total dedication.

There is also an added honesty about the morning run beyond the mere commitment to success: it invariably goes without witness or supervision, and thus without immediate reward, and again that’s something Britton has never sought. I don’t know who actually saw Britton running that morning after her victory in Slovenia last month, yet such stories of her unyielding dedication have always preceded her – and I’ve never had any reason to doubt them.

I did witness one such demonstration, at the 2010 European Championships in Barcelona. It was the morning after Derval O’Rourke won her silver medal in the sprint hurdles, and some of us, lured by an impromptu Irish party, celebrated through the night. On returning to the team hotel at sunrise, the first person we bumped into was Britton, heading out for her morning run, along the Barcelona promenade.

She’d actually run the final of the 3,000 metres steeplechase two nights before, but disappointed with her 11th place, wasted no time in resuming her absolute focus – when she could quite justifiably have been staggering home too at that early hour, just like us foolish ones were.

Talent, as Hunter S Thompson liked to say, will take you a long way, but eventually it has to pay off. Potential will run out – and often runs out very suddenly. Britton has always had the talent to win a European Cross Country, as even I liked to say, although her success last month was less about fulfilling her potential as it was beginning to realise it. Including junior and under-23 appearances, this was her ninth European Cross Country – and having only recently turned 27, the potential is still very much there to win a couple more titles, or at least challenge hard for them.

In the meantime Britton deserves the full pay-off of being champion – because that’s the way the sport has gone. There was no prize money whatsoever for winning in Slovenia last month, and Britton’s only financial reward will come with appearance fees and performance bonuses over the coming weeks. In athletics, money doesn’t begin to talk unless it’s talking to a champion.

“This victory really has opened doors,” says Ian Chaney, Britton’s manager and agent, who like me watched her success in Slovenia last month from the edge of the Great Rift Valley. Chaney spends most of the year in Kenya, where he acts as a scout for Brother Colm O’Connell’s world-famous St Patrick’s High School, and within moments of Britton’s European victory his phone was smoking.

Among the first calls he took that afternoon were from the organisers of today’s Great Edinburgh Cross Country, who wanted Britton to headline the European selection that is taking on the British and Americans. “They’re sending on the contract straightaway,” said Chaney with a smile, “and all I can say is it’s in sterling.”

The big difference now, as Chaney explained to me again this week, is that race promoters are calling him, instead of the other way round. “Even the Diamond League promoters, who would never call you, have been on to me offering Fionnuala a start, so she really has become hot property.”

Some people might be surprised to hear that athletics promotions is still a mostly under the table business, involving cash, brown envelopes, and promises of sealed lips – and the best bargaining chip is still having a championship title next to your time. The sport just doesn’t pay the up and coming athlete, and definitely not the underdog.

Even the once lucrative shoe contracts are mostly a thing of the past. Britton last year signed a deal with Adidas, and it was entirely performance based (her European gold medal probably worth €20,000). Her victory also elevates her to podium status on the Irish Sports Council grant scheme, worth some €40,000, although that hasn’t yet been confirmed.

Without a World Cross Country this year (where there is still prize money, but now sadly enters its biennial cycle) Britton can afford to race more flauntingly, and Chaney has already sealed her appearance fees to run the IAAF Cross Country Challenge in Seville on Sunday week, the Antrim International Cross Country on January 21st, and also the Almond Blossom Cross Country in Portugal on February 26th.

It’s not big money, not that Britton has ever been motivated by financial rewards. Today’s race from Edinburgh goes out live on BBC1 (1pm-2.30pm), and should demonstrate once again why Britton runs – with the grace of a gazelle, the heart of a lion, and the total dedication only realised by never once missing a morning run.