Twice European U20 cross country champion Innes FitzGerald won her first ever international track title, with a dominant performance to win the women’s 5000m at the Tampere 2025 European Athletics U20 Championships on Thursday (7).
Tampere 2025 is being live streamed on the European Athletics website courtesy of Eurovision Sport.
Having taken the long standing European U20 record with a run of 14:39.56 in July’s London Diamond League, she was heavy favourite for gold and right from the gun, she left no room for doubt.
Relentless pace
The British athlete went to front early on and set a pace her rivals simply could not live with. Going through 1km at 3:07.1, she had already split the pack, with only Germany’s Julia Ehrle and Türkiye’s Edibe Yagiz able to stay with her.
By 2km in 6:10.0, FitzGerald had shaken off her two chasers and it became a race to gold and a two-way battle for silver.
The Brit poured on the pace, going through 3km in 9:11.0 and 4km in 12:12.1 with Agate Caune’s championship record of 15:03:85 a possibility. But with the 3000m heats set for Friday morning, the British athlete didn’t push herself to her extreme limits and settled for gold in 15:09.04, still the second fastest time in championships history.
Ehrle and Yagiz had a titanic struggle for the remaining medals. Ehrle held the advantage for the most part, but Yagiz nudged past with four laps to go. It was a see-saw battle on the last lap, but the Turk just found a little extra, taking silver in 15:43.60, 0.46 ahead of the German.
Both athletes also claimed new personal bests, along with 13 other athletes also setting lifetime bests in FitzGerald’s slipstream.
"I feel really pleased. This is definitely a such a good crowd that carried me round. My season has been incredible so far," said the gold medalist.
