British teenager clocks 8:40.05 in Ostrava to beat Sofia Thøgersen’s mark by 10 seconds
Innes FitzGerald’s team-mates at Exeter College can have missed her presence finally weekend’s British Universities Cross Nation Championships in Cardiff. However the 18-year-old’s resolution to race indoors in Ostrava as an alternative paid off as she demolished her personal PB and set a European under-20 girls’s report of 8:40.05.
Racing on the Czech Indoor Gala on Tuesday (Feb 4), FitzGerald took down Sofia Thøgersen’s mark of 8:50.26 and in addition sliced 16 seconds off Zola Budd’s British indoor under-20 report of 8:56.13 set by the barefoot runner when profitable a global match at Cosford 40 years in the past.
FitzGerald first made her mark in the summertime of 2022 when, as a relative novice, she smashed the UK under-17 girls’s 3000m report with 8:59.67 to win the SIAB Faculties Worldwide.
She struggled to enhance that mark for some time, however confirmed her potential on the nation when profitable two European under-20 titles and numerous nationwide crowns on the mud. What’s extra, final summer time she completed a positive fourth within the 3000m on the World Beneath-20 Championships in Lima behind three east Africans.
Innes FitzGerald (Getty)
Beneath the steering of coach Gavin Pavey, she improved her 3000m greatest to eight:48.30 when profitable a combined intercourse race by 22 seconds in Cardiff final month and has now taken an extra eight seconds off that point this week.
It caps an awesome few days for British athletes over 3000m with Melissa Courtney-Bryant profitable in model on the New Steadiness Indoor Grand Prix in Boston in 8:28.69 and George Mills breaking Josh Kerr’s UK report with 7:27.92 in France.
Lastly, individuals are actually speaking extra about FitzGerald’s performances fairly than her much-publicised reluctance to journey by air attributable to environmental causes.
The Ostrava race was gained by Ethiopia’s Freweyni Hailu in 8:24.17 as FitzGerald battled behind into fourth place, clocking kilometre splits of two:55.8, 2:54.2 and a couple of:50.0.
As a measure of FitzGerald’s potential, Budd’s 8:56.13 efficiency in 1985 was a UK and Commonwealth indoor report on the time. Budd, who was 18 on the time, gained the world cross-country senior girls’s title in Lisbon just a few weeks later – 23 seconds forward of Ingrid Kristiansen, who in flip went on to win the London Marathon the next month in 2:21:06.
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