By Cliona Foley
HIS selection was somewhat controversial, but one of his key team-mates says that the Irish management was absolutely right to pick Alistair Cragg for Sunday's European Cross-Country Championships in Santry Demesne.
Eyebrows were raised at Cragg's selection considering he did not race in the Irish trials (the first three automatically qualified) and has only raced once (a subsequent road-race) since failing to get through the 5,000m heats at last summer's World Championships.
But Irish team-mate Mark Kenneally has backed his US-based Clonliffe club-mate to the hilt to pull out a big performance.
"I ran with Alistair the only time he ran Euro Cross-Country before and he was just amazing that day," Kenneally said of Cragg's eighth place in Croatia in 2002, which was the South African-born runner's Irish debut.
"What people don't realise is that we got over there on the Friday, raced on the Sunday and Alistair didn't get out of bed on the Saturday. He was sick as a pig yet he came out the next day and ran an unbelievable race.
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"OK, he has had bad runs in the past, but in terms of fielding your strongest potential team on the day, I felt we had to have him."
Cragg is only arriving in Ireland today and Martin Fagan tomorrow morning. Both men's respective training bases in California (Mammoth Lakes) and Arizona (Flagstaff) were hit by unseasonably early snow this week.
But Irish team manager Anne Keenan-Buckley said yesterday she has no worries about their late homecoming as it is designed to maximize their altitude training, pointing out that Andrew Ledwith recently won the national inter-counties just a day after arriving home from America.
She stressed that the Irish senior women provide Ireland's best chance of a team medal but Kenneally was extremely optimistic also about the senior men's chances.
"I really think we've a very good chance to get a team medal," he insisted. "We're at home and have the strongest team I've every been on with Martin, Alistair and Andrew .
"I don't see any of us who should be outside the top 30 if we run well, and I really think we could have four guys in the top 15 or 20.
"Anne has talked about not going out too hard but, at the same time, if you're not close to where you want to be in the first five or six minutes you're not going to come through, so we have to be reasonably aggressive.
"If you're not in the top 15 or 20 by the two-kilometre mark you're just not going to be coming through. It's not the sort of race that you pick people off in, you have to be there and then you're hanging on really," Kenneally admitted.
Team-mate Mick Clohisey (Raheny), who was fourth in the inter-counties and later promoted to starting when Mark Christie had to pull out, also believes home venue will be a huge advantage.
But Clohisey, who coincidentally works in a shop locally for title sponsors Spar, accepted that nicking a team medal will probably all hang on Ireland's fourth man home as he will be the final scorer for the team event.
"On their day Fagan, Cragg and Ledwith should be well up there and then it's all about the fourth spot between the rest of us," he said.
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