Dean backs cross-country to return to Olympic fold

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Posted: Tuesday 24th March 2009 | 14:27

EUROPEAN silver medallist Hatti Dean has called for cross-country to be reintroduced to the Olympic schedule.

Dean, 27, is part of the 23-strong Great Britain team that will head to Amman, Jordan for the World Cross Country Championships this weekend.

Dean, who is also a former British record holder for the 3000m steeplechase, missed out on making her Olympic debut in Beijing, due to an untimely ankle stress fracture.

Cross-country has not been seen at the Olympic Games since 1924 in Paris, but the International Association of Athletics Federations have recently backed a proposal - led by double Olympic 10,000m champion Haile Gebrselassie - for its inclusion at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

And Dean has lent her voice to the growing clamour, and set her sights on making up for her Beijing disppointment, should the gut-busting event return to the Olympics, after 90 years in the wilderness.

"I'm really a cross-country runner by nature - it comes a lot easier to me," said Dean.

"I know some people don't really like cross-country and feel a lot more at home on the track but for me it's the opposite.

"Missing out on going to Beijing was extremely heart-wrenching but I don't think the Olympics is completely out of the question for me.

"I would love to see cross-country running introduced to the Olympics.

"I know that there is scope to introduce it at the Winter Olympics and I don't see what the problem would be with that.

"I've certainly heard a few rumours about it but I don't know how far along it is at all. Watch this space!"

IAAF president Lamine Diack added: "The IOC have now written to us to ask our advice and we have told them that we are in favour of it.

"We are prepared to organise cross country in the Winter Olympics. It would be a good move for our sport."

Dean, who has competed at the World Championships before - in Japan in 2006 and Kenya in 2007 - where she finished 15th and Britain's highest finisher.

She will lead a relatively inexperienced team to the Middle East with the absence of Liz Yelling - who has finished in the top 20 three times at the World Championships - and half-sister Hayley, a former European gold medallist.

But with three-time European junior champion Steph Twell making her debut appearance in the world stage, Dean is convinced Team GB will do themselves justice.

"It's hard to say how I think I'm going to get on but if I can get into the top 30 or 40 I'll be happy. Anything else will be a real bonus," she added.

"It's such a big field and there is so much strength in the field that it's really tough to say how "I'll get on. There's no doubting the Africans will be strong and the Portuguese did very well at the Europeans so they'll be a threat.

"In fact that could be who are main rivals are because we'd love to finish as the top European nation -that will be the real aim for the team as a whole."

GERARD MEAGHER