WSEH AC’s Hayley Yelling caused the biggest surprise at the European Cross Country Championships in Dublin on Saturday by unexpectedly winning the Senior Ladies Race and leading the GB team to gold medals in the team event. Hayley, who retired from the sport a year ago, getting married in the meantime, has only been back in training for 4 weeks on a limited training base of 40 miles per week. She missed the sport and cut short her retirement with the intention of ‘fun running’ but with sights set on making the Commonwealth Games England team at 10,000m in India next summer. She was hence surprised to win the UK Challenge race in Liverpool a couple of weeks ago, that qualified her for the GB team in the European race. In Dublin she went out hard expecting to be overhauled by her chasers in the latter stages of the race. In the event she actually increased her lead over the 2nd placer Rosa Morato of Spain on the final lap to win by some seven seconds. This is the second European Cross Country title for Hayley, repeating her success in 2004.
Another WSEH athlete to get amongst the medals was Benedict Whitby who was 27th in the Senior Mens race, grabbing a share of the GB team silver medals.
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