McCormack stars on her return in Aarhus
FIONNUALA McCormack produced an outstanding run to finish 18th at the World Cross Country Championships in Aarhus, Denmark, yesterday, just six months after giving birth.
The two-time champion of Europe was the second non-African across the line, with Danish heroine Anna Moller finishing 15th. The race was won by Hellen Obiri of Kenya.
On what was the most vicious course in the event’s history – with mud pits, sand pits, water pools and a succession of rolling hills – it all played into the hands of Kilcoole athlete McCormack.
‘We all know how much I love cross country,” she said. ‘They built it up to something brilliant and they actually pulled it off. The crowds out there were unbelievable.’
Having missed 2018 while pregnant with her daughter Isla, McCormack relished this return to the international scene, fighting through the field over the latter half.
‘I was saying to myself that the top-25 is what I really wanted, but in the race itself I wanted top 15 so I’m a little bit disappointed I didn’t get it.’
She resumed running a little over a month after giving birth and in the five months since she has returned to something very near her best.
‘I was lucky nothing was complicated [with the pregnancy], so I got back into it as quickly as I could. I’ve never not run for that long since I was about 12, but I watched everything and I wanted to be part of everything so it’s nice to be back.’ With runners dropping like bowling pins after they crossed the line, McCormack was one of the few still standing, a measure of her ability to endure. ‘It was real cross country,’ she said. ‘This was proper tough – real hills, real muck, real water, everything was real about it and the support was as well.’
Elsewhere there was little to cheer for the Irish, with McCormack’s teammate Sara Treacy finishing 73rd. Sean Tobin led the way in the senior men’s race, the Clonmel man far from satisfied with 62nd place.
‘I wanted to go out conservative and after the first lap my quads went to jelly,’ he said. ‘The last three laps I just said, “keep going”. We’ve got a lot of work to do if we want to come back and be competitive. It just shows where I am – 62nd in the world, clearly not good enough.’
Kevin Dooney was 105th in the same race, while in the U20 race Darragh McElhinney was 53rd and Jamie Battle 68th.