Euro XC 2023 – 8th place for Cormac Dalton (10th Dec)
Superb eighth place in Europe for Cormac Dalton
Everyone in Mullingar Harriers congratulates Cormac Dalton on his superb eighth place finish at the European Cross Country in Brussels on Sunday afternoon 10th December, leading the Irish senior men team to fourth place, their best finish place in many years. This capped a real breakthrough year for Cormac, coming quickly on the heels of his senior men cross country title three weeks before, his first National title since he was 11 years of age. Cormac really stepped up and announced his arrival on the big stage and looked completely at home as he mixed it with some of the biggest stars of European distance running.
After a week of rain and snow in Brussels, the ground was saturated and quickly broke down during the early races on the programme and by the time it came to the Senior Men 9,000m. the final race of the afternoon, the runners had to navigate long stretches of soft muddy ground and tricky slippery corners. In fact, underfoot conditions were rather reminiscent of Gowran for the National cross country where we saw Cormac more than equal to the muddy challenge, which must have given him huge confidence for the conditions in Brussels.
After a relatively conservative start, Cormac quickly settled into his running in the leading group, conserving as much energy as possible and staying inside the top ten places, a perfect place from which to gauge how the race is unfolding. The leading group began to slowly stretch out but Cormac stuck to his task and looked comfortable and strong as the laps counted down. Going into the final lap, Cormac was still in tenth place, but right on the heels of ninth, and the Irish team was in third. As expected, the final lap was a furious burn-up and while Cormac had enough in the tank to take him into eighth place, unfortunately the team was pushed into fourth place, just missing the bronze medals but top marks for effort by all. Just to emphasise how good eighth place is, this is the third best finish by an Irish man since the first European Cross Country was held in 1994, only Joe Sweeney (DSD) fifth in 2011 and Martin Fagan (Mullingar Harriers) seventh in 2007 have bettered Cormac’s performance.
In last year’s edition in Italy, Cormac finished in thirty sixth place and the Irish team in eighth, so this was a really significant improvement and augers well for the months ahead he heads into 2024, an Olympic year.
