from the AAI There is no doubting the talent on the track of France’s Noureddine Smail, who won the 2007 European Athletics U23 Championships 5,000m gold medal and also got a silver this summer at the same event.
However, in Dublin, he put behind him doubts over his cross country ability by getting his first major international gold medal in the winter.
Cross Country hasn’t always been Smail’s favourite surface. He finished 11th in the 2006 SPAR European Cross Country Championships junior men’s race but then had a disastrous run in Brussels last year when he finished 64th.
He won a three-man duel for the medal by moving away from his compatriot Hassan Chahdi, third in last year’s junior race, and Belgium’s Atelaw Bekele, in the final kilometre of the 8018m.
The trio started to put daylight between themselves and six other men at around 3500m, with Bekele making most of the pace in a bid to get his country’s second victory of the day.
The two Frenchmen seemed quite happy to let their neighbour do all the hard work until the final stages of the race.
After Smail made his move, shortly to cross the line in 25:11, Chahdi also then started to lay down the gauntlet to Bekele and won the battle down the home straight for the silver medal.
Chahdi stopped the clock in 25:17 with Bekele four seconds further back.
In an impressive performance even though he finished out of the medals, last year’s junior champion Florian Carvalho finished fourth.
With three men in the top four, France secured their first gold medal in this category, although they had to wait until Mattieu Le Stum finished in 24th place until their triumph was confirmed.
Great Britain finished second with 45 points while Belgium got their first set of team gold medals of any description since 2002.
Turkey’s Selim Bayrak had been tipped to be a gold medal contender, after finishing third last year in Brussels and comfortably taking the European Athletics U23 Championships 10000m gold medal, but the Ethiopian-born runner couldn’t follow in the footsteps of his teammate Haydar.
He is still clearly short of being back to his best after injury curtailed his summer after his win in Kaunas and could only come home a disappointed 13th.
Likewise, Spain’s Mohammed Elbendir, the 2009 European Athletics U23 Championships 5000m gold medallist, had a day to forget. He is still recovering from a recent bout of flu and was 25th.