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Athletics: Yelling marks comeback with European title

December 14, 2024
To quote the course announcer at Dublin’s Santry Demense course on Sunday, “This can only be described as a masterful piece of running.” They were appropriate words uttered as Great Britain’s Hayley Yelling was close to the line and just a few seconds away from regaining the SPAR European Cross Country Championships title she won in 2004.
Even more remarkable, the 35-year-old school teacher has only been training seriously again since the start of November. It’s almost exactly 12 months ago to the day, it was announced that Yelling had decided to hang up her spikes in the wake of a disappointing 19th place last year in Brussels.
However, the running bug started to bite again at the start of the winter and clearly her appetite has returned in force.
To many people’s amazement, Yelling pushed hard from the gun and started to move away from the field just a kilometre into the 8018m race.
After the first lap of 1650m, she had four seconds advantage over a 14-strong chasing pack that was headed by the highly favoured Portuguese pair of Inês Monteiro and Ana Dulce Félix, as well as the local poster girl of the event, Mary Cullen.
The gap stayed the same through the next lap, although the group behind her was reduced to five - Monteiro, Félix and fellow Portuguese runner Jessica Augusto along with Spain’s Rosa María Morató and the Netherlands’ Adrienne Herzog, as Cullen started to slip back - with Yelling looking remarkably relaxed despite her slightly awkward running action of her arms swinging across her front.
Yelling then made another surge from the halfway point and had six seconds to spare over Augusto and Morató, second and fifth last year, who had slowly shaken themselves free of their companions at the next check point at 4823m.
In the sixth kilometre, with Yelling still running in very confident fashion apart from rather delicately picking her way around the occasional but growing patches of mud on the course, Morató started to edge away from Augusto in a bid to add to her bronze medal from 2007.
Behind Morató, Herzog had moved onto the shoulder of Augusto, who was clearly flagging a little, in a battle for third place.
On the final lap, Yelling’s exhilaration of being on top of the podium was clear to see. There was a broad smile on her face and no sign of any panic, before she crossed the line in 27:49.
“It was fantastic. I think retirement is the way forward but I guess I’m not retired any more. It wasn’t a deliberate tactic to go to the front, it was just that I wanted to run hard and see how far I could go,” said a thrilled Yelling.
Yelling was running in the championships for the 12th time and almost certainly will equal the women’s record of 13 appearances - held by Belgium’s Anja Smolders - next year.
Morató raised her arms in delight at getting the silver medal, finishing seven seconds behind Yelling while Herzog - the 2007 SPAR European Cross Country Championships U23 silver medallist - added the bronze to her collection when she came home eight seconds further back.
Augusto, Monteiro and Félix finished in the next three places to deliver Portugal their expected team gold medals with 25 points, retaining the title they won last year.
It was the perfect promotional boost for next year’s SPAR European Cross Country Championships, which will be held on the Algarve resort of Albufeira in Portugal.
Great Britain took the silver medals with 51 points while Spain came home third in 58 points.
To the disappointment of the local crowd, who were eagerly anticipating a medal from Cullen, the Sligo runner had a difficult time over the second half of the race and drifted back to finish 12th.
In the Under 23’s event, Steph Twell - 2008 European Athletics Rising Star of the Year who completed an unprecedented hat-trick of victories in the junior ranks 12 months ago - uncharacteristically started to struggle in the second half of the race and eventually finished 11th.
Whilst in the Junior race Great Britain’s Kate Avery, who also got the European Athletics Junior Championships 3000m silver medal, came out of the pack in the middle stages of the race and was on her own over the final 1500m to secure the bronze medal in 14:27.
Louise Hudson, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine
Twell - 2008 European Athletics Rising Star of the Year who completed an unprecedented hat-trick of victories in the junior ranks 12 months ago - uncharacteristically started to struggle in the second half of the race and eventually finished 11th

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