UNDER 23 WOMEN Kuijken delights Dutch visitors – European Athletics (EAA) – NEWS

Plenty of Dutch cross country fans made the trip short trip across the border to Brussels and were rewarded for their efforts by Susan Kuijken winning the SPAR European Cross Country Championships Under 23 women's title.

Kuijken won at a canter once she had reined in the early leader, Turkey's Sultan Haydar, covering the 6,000m course in 21:02 and winning by eight seconds from Britain's Sarah Tunstall, despite being able to ease up and relax over the final stages of the race with the gold medal secure.

Haydar made an immediate move to the front from the gun and started going away from the other 65 women on ths start line. She had an eight seconds lead after just 1,500m but at the head of the rest of the field and looking ominously comfortable was Kuijken.

Kuijken gradually started to reduce Haydar's lead over the next kilometre before then overtaking the flagging Turkish woman, who was eventually unable to finish the race, at around 2,500m and then left the rest of the field trailing in her wake around what she had said beforehand was her favourite cross country course with good memories from competing on it as a teenager.

From the halfway point, it was just a question who was going to finish second as the Florida State University student – who finished second in the high class US collegiate (NCAA) championships three weeks ago – looked extremely composed and was running steadily on the soft course.

In the final 200m, a broad smile crossed Kuijken's face well before she crossed the line, although she was to insist that the victory was nothing like as easy it looked.

"It wasn't easy to win this race, cross country is never easy. The start was very fast, I also didn't know that girl from Turkey but I'd made up my mind not to go for silver, only gold counts. Fortunately my tactics worked out well, because I don t like races to take off very hard from early on. I knew I was in good shape and that I could go for gold today because of my result in the NCAA nationals. I have been training very well in Florida and now I want to prove in Europe that I have made a lot of progress on the international scene," reflected Kuijken.

Tunstall moved steadily away from the chasing pack from the halfway point and was always running in second place over the final two kilometres.

"In the beginning, I thought the Turkish girl was going to win easily, but the course was very hard with the mud and the sharp bends. However, this course suited me because I'm a real mountain runner. At the end of the third lap, I still hoped to catch up with the Dutch girl, but I didn't manage to close the gap," said Tunstall, who got Great Britain's first individual medal in the category.

Another medal looked to be heading Britain's way with Morag Maclarty looked set for the bronze after following 20 to 30 metres adrift of Tunstall for most of the second half of the race but she was just pipped for a place on the podium by Russia's inspired Yuliya Zarudneva, who increased her tempo over the final kilometre to catch Maclarty in the last few centimetres of the race.

Tunstall, after having crossed the line, turned around and shouted at Maclarty that her Russian rival was closing on her and then started cheering for her in the ultimately losing battle to get two British women on the podium.

"With the line in sight, I just thought about my little daughter who is two-and-a -half years old now. I gave it all I had, the very last drop of energy," explained  Zarudneva.

A big surprise was the form of Romania's defending champion Ancuta Bobocel who, in comparison to previous occasions, never looked entirely comfortable. She finished fifth but was never challenging for a medal in the later stages of the race to add to the plethora of honours she's previously picked up at the Championships.

With their four scorers in the top 11 places, Great Britain was an easy winner of the team competition for the third successive year, totalling 24 points. In fact,  Britain's has won the Under 23 women's team title every year since this category was inaugurated in 2006.

Russia got the team silver medals, just like they had done in 2007, with 44 points, while Germany did better than expected to take the bronze medals with 57 points.

European Athletics  (EAA)