Britton bounces back with a gold medal

SPORTSWOMAN AWARD FOR DECEMBER: FIONNUALA BRITTON (ATHLETICS)SO, HARDLY had Nina Carberry been crowned 2011 Sportswoman of the Year we were off again, in search of her successor, this the ninth year of the awards . . . to think that the Maguire twins, Lisa and Leona, weren't even 10 when we got under way at the beginning of 2004.

And listening to the other monthly winners talk last month at the ceremony about their schedules for 2012, it was a reminder of what a busy – and hopefully prosperous – sporting year it will be.

While plenty of our leading sportswomen, not least some of our 2011 award winners, including Carberry, the Maguires, Madeline Perry and GAA captains Ursula Jacob and Amy O’Shea, will be pursuing non-Olympic honours again, London this summer will, of course, be the centre of much of the attention.

And many of last year’s award recipients, among them Katie Taylor, Deirdre Ryan, Aileen Morrison and Chloe Magee, have either already secured Olympic qualification or will set about doing that in the early part of the year. While December saw the Murphys, swimmer Grainne and sailor Annalise, secure their places in the Olympics, it was the gold medal-winning performance at the European Cross Country Championships of Fionnuala Britton, yet another of our London-bound sportswomen, that stood out.

Britton was our sportswoman of the month in December 2010 when she just missed out on a medal in the same race, given the identical time as the runner in third. That disappointment, she said, just made her even more determined to do better in the 2011 race, the Wicklow runner doing considerably more than that, as it proved.

“After last year, this is the only medal I wanted,” she said, after she won Ireland’s second European Cross Country Championships gold medal after Catherina McKiernan’s victory at the inaugural race back in 1994.

And Britton started 2012 just as she ended 2011, in outstanding form, dominating the Great Edinburgh Cross Country from start to finish, finishing 20 seconds clear of second-placed Gemma Steele of Britain in what was her first race since winning gold in Slovenia.

The 27-year-old’s trip to Spain last weekend proved less productive, finishing eighth at the Seville International Cross Country, over a minute behind the imperious Linet Masai of Kenya.

Britton has, though, already qualified for the 3,000 metre steeplechase in London, now aiming to achieve qualifying times in the 5,000m and 10,000m, so, fitness permitting, whatever distance she competes in, she will be one of several of our representatives in London. And even if track isn’t her first love, she is, she said, happy to “give it a go”.

So, already then, Britton is a contender to succeed Carberry as sportswoman of the year, the awards covering December 2011 to November 2012 – which means that European Cross Country Championships gold is included in her case for the honour.

But it’s hard not to assume that picking an overall winner next December, bearing in mind what’s to come this year, will prove a decidedly tricky, if highly enjoyable, task.