Efrem Gidey became the first Irish athlete ever to triumph at the European 10,000m Cup, when he won the senior men’s race in Pacé, France on Saturday (24).
Coming just over a month after placing fourth over half marathon at the Brussels-Leuven 2025 European Running Championships, it was a superb result for the 24-year-old, winning in 27:40:47.
Second went to Valentin Gondouin, who pipped Gidey to bronze at Brussels-Leuven, the French athlete outsprinting his international team-mate Felix Bour as they took silver and bronze in 27:41.95 and 27:42:00 respectively.
Gidey and Bour set early pace
Gidey and Bour laid their stalls out early and were the only athletes to stay within the slipstream of pacemaker Martin Kiprotich of Uganda, going through 5km at 27:30 pace.
As Kiprotich stepped off the track with 10 laps (4km) remaining, Goudouin and Belgium’s Simon Debognies, a European U23 and U20 silver medallist over 5000m, joined Gidey and Bour to form a leading quartet.
Spain’s Ilias Fifa flourished briefly to create a lead pack of five, but he lost ground with eight laps to go and ultimately, failed to finish. But the remaining four ran in train formation right through to the penultimate lap, with Debognies doing the bulk of the work at the front.
Decisive break
But with 600m to go, Gidey made a decisive break that his opponents could not counter. It left The French duo and Debognies to fight out silver and bronze. The Belgian paid for his bold front running and had a watching brief over the final lap as Gidey, Gondouin and Bour pulled away.
Debognies did, however, have the satisfaction of a new personal best of 27:48:40 in fourth. He also spearheaded Belgium to team silver behind France with 1:24:51.35. France’s third finisher was sixth-placed Simon Bedard in 28:06.72.
Debognies’ supporting cast members were Clément Deflandre who won the B race in 28:30.91 and Dorian Boulvin (13th, 28:32.04). Spain picked up bronze, thanks to a solid team effort from Juan Antonio Pérez (10th, 28:26.39), Jesús Ramos (11th, 28:26.89) and Aarón Las Heras (12th, 28:31.43) combing for a total time of 1:24:58.61.
Chris Broadbent for European Athletics