European Athletics (EAA) – News – SENIOR WOMEN’S FINAL: Portugal’s Augusto dominates to take gold

Portugal’s Jessica Augusto added the 2010 SPAR European Cross Country Championships senior women’s title to the one she won as a junior a decade ago with one of the most dominating performance seen at this event in recent years.

Going into the lead almost from the gun she was chased by Spain’s Alessandra Aguilar for the first 3km, before the Spaniard eventually slipped back to sixth. However, Augusto just eased away from the rest of her rivals in the second half of the race and was out on her own.

There was enough daylight between herself and Turkey’s Binnaz Uslu in the home straight to give her time to blow kisses to the ecstatic Portuguese crowd and slow to a stroll 10 metres from home.

“I would like to dedicate this victory to everyone who has come here today and made these Championships a success, and especially to my mother whose arrival here is a huge surprise,” said the stunned Augusto, who clasped her hands to her face, fell to her knees and kissed the ground after she had crossed the line.

“I also want to dedicate it to my friend Inês Monteiro (the 2009 2010 SPAR European Cross Country Championships bronze medallist) who is usually in the team with me but is injured this year. I’m really happy at making history and also helping Portugal take the team title. I'm very pleased with my performance, I didn't trained the best way for this competition but things really worked out well,” she added.

Augusto clocked 26:52 for the 8170m course, with Uslu just coming home five seconds behind after all of the Portuguese runner’s celebrations over the final few hundred metres.

At one point it looked like there was going to be a Portuguese one-two, with Dulce Félix in second place and running well at the bell but she ran out of steam with one kilometre to go and Uslu had enough in reserve after running a good second half of the race to overtake her.

“This was very good. After I won the junior title cross country championship in 2004 and then was the under 23 champion in 2006, it feels great to come second this year. I hope I can win the next year. The race was very hard but luckily I felt good and finished very well,” reflected Uslu.

Félix finished third three seconds behind Uslu. In fourth, clearly inspired by hearing the Irish national anthem just a few minutes before the gun when the under 23 medals were awarded, was Ireland’s Fionnuala Britton, having her best run at a major championship since her SPAR European Cross Country Championships silver medal as an under 23 runner in 2006.

Britton was third at the half way point but seemed to struggle a little on the penultimate of circuit of the four large laps of 1600m before getting her second wind.

Portugal had four women in the top nine to comfortably retain their senior women’s team title.

Marisa Barros, generally known as a marathon specialist and the one newcomer to the team from the squad that won in Dublin 12 months ago, was an impressive fifth while Sara Moreira, the 2010 European Athletics Championships 5000m bronze medallist, was ninth.

The hosts scored just 19 points while Great Britain, last year’s silver medallists were a distant second with 65 points and the entire podium from 12 months ago was repeated when Spain took the bronze medals with 72 points. For comparison, the scores in Dublin were Portugal 25, Great Britain 51 and Spain 58.

Of the two former SPAR European Cross Country Championships senior women’s champions in the field, Ukraine's 2006 winner Tetyana Holovchenko was seventh while Great Britain’s defending champion Hayley Yelling-Higham struggled home in 25th place, clearly not fully recovered after a severe cold recently.

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 European Athletics (EAA) – News