An exciting Irish team of 40 athletes will take to Turin this weekend for the 28th edition of the SPAR European Cross Country Championships.
They will be spread across six individual races at U20, U23 and Senior in Mane’s and Women’s as well as a Mixed relay with four runners each taking on a 1,500 metre leg.
The action which was on at the Sport Ireland Campus last December switches to La Mandria Park in Piemonte, on Saturday, December 11th.
They will be part of a gathering of 550 competitors from 40 countries who are set to battle it out over the course of the day.
Ireland claimed 3 medals (2 teams and 1 individual) in Dublin last year, resulting in Ireland finishing as 3rd nation overall on the points table behind GB & NI, and France.
Sisters Eilish and Roisin Flanagan will compete alongside each other after Eilish replaced Ciara Mageean who withdrew through illness at the weekend.
Olympians Sarah Healy in the Women’s U23, and Andrew Coscoran and Nadia Power in the Mixed Relay will all be wearing the green shirt as well as Brian Fay (pictured above) who broke the Irish Indoor 5,000 metre record last weekend and will now lace up in very different circumstances.
The Senior Races will be shown live on RTÉ 2 on Saturday with start times of 11:33 for the Women and 12:10 for the Men. The other races will be streamed live on the European Athletics YouTube Channel with the Mixed Relay at 09:30 and the Women’s U23 with Healy at 11:03.
There are hopes of medals with the Mixed Relay to the fore with Nadia Power bringing home the anchor leg.
