{"id":192829,"date":"2025-12-15T11:42:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T11:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/192829\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T11:42:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T11:42:07","slug":"griggs-the-nearly-man-no-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/192829\/","title":{"rendered":"Griggs ‘the nearly man’ no more"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick Griggs embraced his “full circle” moment after capturing the gold medal in the men’s under-23 race at the European Cross Country Championships in Portugal on Sunday on a memorable day for Irish athletics.<\/p>\n

Griggs was just 16 when he delivered a shock gold on the track in the 3000m race at the European Under-20 Championships in Estonia in 2021, but his subsequent attempts to top the podium at continental level have been marked by a series of near misses.<\/p>\n

The Tyrone man arrived in Lagoa having secured silver medals in four previous European age group championships, suffering plenty of bad luck along the way.<\/p>\n

A late stumble in 2022 saw him edged out for gold in the the U20 race in Italy in 2022, while last year’s runner-up berth in Turkey was secured despite suffering a shuddering fall at the very beginning of the race that subsequently led to a serious knee injury.<\/p>\n

No wonder Griggs, who turns 21 this week, has previously described himself as “the nearly man” of the competition.<\/p>\n

However, while fate can be a cruel mistress, she is also a fickle one, and Griggs righted the wrongs on Sunday as he scored in emphatic style clocking a time of 17 minutes and 47 seconds, 12 seconds for the 5.96-kilometre course, as he finished 12 seconds clear of his nearest pursuer.<\/p>\n

As well as becoming the first Irishman to win an individual gold at the championships, eighth and 10th-place finishes for Callum Morgan and Niall Murphy saw the team secure gold in the team category for the age group.<\/p>\n

Irish athletes secured four medals in total<\/a>, with 16-year-old Emma Hickey belying her youth and inexperience to bag bronze in the women’s under-20 race, while Brian Fay, Efrem Gidey, Cormac Dalton, Jack O’Leary and Darragh McElhinney finished second behind Spain in the men’s senior team event.<\/p>\n

\"14<\/p>\n

Speaking on RT\u00c9’s Morning Ireland, Griggs said: “It’s unreal. I can’t believe it, to be honest. I’m still riding the wave of yesterday.<\/p>\n

“The entire Irish team, we all went out there and did our country proud.<\/p>\n

“Came home with four medals \u2013 two golds, a silver and a bronze.<\/p>\n

“The camp is absolutely delighted, so we’re all buzzing to return home to Ireland today.”<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the fallout from the championships 12 months ago, he added: “I get a bone infection after this race last year.<\/p>\n

“I came second and I fell at the start, so I got a bone infection.<\/p>\n

“They don’t really know what happened, but it was a bit of a hassle and I kind of missed three months of training<\/p>\n

“It wasn’t great, but I was really proud that me and my team managed to come back and still put together a really good year, despite what happened.<\/p>\n

“It was like a full circle moment from what happened last year, it’s come full circle, and I’ve finally got the win and put all those demons to bed.<\/p>\n

“It’s really, really, special.<\/p>\n

“I’ll maybe celebrate a little bit this week, have a bit of a down week and then it’ll be straight back to it for the indoor season.”<\/p>\n

Grigg’s dominance was such that Mark Kirk could enjoy the closing moments in real time.<\/p>\n

“I was about 250 metres from the finish,” coach Kirk said, quipping: “He came past me and he had a fairly comfortable lead, so I sort of had it in my head that even if he tripped and fell like he did a couple of years ago, I think he still would have managed to pick himself up and get the win!<\/p>\n

“He’s out of this world. I think he’s a one off. I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like it in Ireland again for sure.”<\/p>\n

Griggs will now turn his attention to the indoors arena in early 2026, with Kirk adding: “He has some big ambitions for races in the States.<\/p>\n

“There is an indoor track in Boston which has a great reputation of being a very fast track, so we’ll be hoping there will be some quick times in the end of January, early February.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Griggs embraced his “full circle” moment after capturing the gold medal in the men’s under-23 race at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-192829","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}