Fiona Everard rubs shoulders with the best in Europe

FIONA Everard rubbed shoulders with the best at the European Cross Country Championships in Brussels last Sunday, and held her own.

The Enniskeane athlete (25) was making her senior debut at these championships, but took it all in her stride to finish 34th overall, and was the third Irish athlete to cross the finish line.

Everard had qualified to represent Ireland off the back of her sensational national senior cross-country championship title win last month and had told the Star that she was going to use this experience as a learning opportunity.

‘It will be my first senior European cross-country so there really isn’t any pressure and there will be no expectation. I’ll look to soak up as much of the experience as possible and hopefully use it for future competitions. If I make Euro cross again, I can use it there as well,’ Everard said, and she’ll take a lot of positives from the weekend.

Her finishing time of 37:06 was 35 seconds off a top-20 place, while she was the third Irish woman home, following Fionnuala McCormack (Kilcoole AC) who finished a brilliant fourth, while Fionnuala Ross (Armagh AC) was 30th. Behind debutant Everard were Mary Mulhare (Portlaoise AC) in 39th, Eilish Flanagan (Finn Valley AC) in 44th and Roisin Flanagan (Finn Valley AC) in 49th.

The senior women’s medals went the way of Norway’s Karoline Bjerkeli Grovdl (33:40), Italy’s Nadia Battocletti (34:25), and Great Britain’s Abbie Donnelly (34:42), with McCormack crossing the finish 18 seconds behind the leading trio over the new 9,000m distance.