GB team captain Steph Twell says Britain’s impressive medal table-topping tradition at the European Cross Country Championships is a confidence boost, not added pressure, ahead of Sunday’s event

With this being her ninth appearance at a European Cross Country Championships, Steph Twell certainly has experience on her side.

The British squad topped the medal table for the sixth year in succession in 2013 and Twell, the three-time junior Euro Cross champion who has been named as captain for Sunday’s event in Samokov in Bulgaria, sees no reason that the team can’t make it seven.

“I think it’s a case of well we’ve done it before, why can’t we do it again?” explains the 25-year-old. “I don’t see it as pressure or negativity. I feel like we’ve stepped up to it before so we can do it again.”

Twell claimed her junior titles at this event between 2006 and 2008 but has struggled with injury over the past few years. She overcame a further setback earlier this year to make it to the start line of the Commonwealth Games 5000m, the Scot having claimed 1500m bronze in Delhi four years before, and since then has recorded some promising results including a win at the Leeds Abbey Dash 10km.

“The Leeds Abbey Dash was a huge breath of fresh air for me,” she says. “I felt like Steph again.”

Her time in Leeds was a 32:28 personal best. “For me that was a four-year PB over any distance,” she explains. “It was such a huge relief.”

While 18 members of the 36-strong GB & NI team will be making their Euro Cross debuts, Gemma Steel is among the more experienced members joining Twell and having won a bronze and a silver on the last two occasions she has competed the Charnwood athlete leads gold medal hopes in Samokov.

On the experience gained over a decade of attending Euro Cross events, Twell says: “It’s that accumulation of experience that I think quite often people neglect.

“For me it’s from the early days of knowing how to position myself in the race, to knowing the sort of intensity of the pace of how fast it goes out. Knowing that we’re going to be coping with laps.”

The AFD athlete says she is “super proud” to be British team captain this time around. “It wasn’t until it was pointed out that this is my ninth cap that I realised how much experience I guess I’ve had,” she says. “I’m really honoured to be recognised for that role so that I can pass on my experience.

“The words that I’ll have for the team that I will help advise will be to just really respect what an amazing cross country set up we have in Britain.

“I think it’s the purest form of running. It’s more about running your heart out. There’s a beauty to that.

“So many athletes have come from cross country and I think it’s very easy to dismiss once you’re at the likes of the Olympic Games but these are the stepping stones.”

As well as having great tradition on their side, Twell also believes the GB team can benefit from the likely conditions in Bulgaria this weekend.

“Often when we go to cross-country races it’s flat as a pancake, it’s dry as a bone, there’s a bell on the last lap and it kind of feels a bit like a track race,” she says. “But from the conditions this weekend is looks actually like it’s going to be a cross country which I think we’re very fit for purpose for!”

Click here for an online preview of Sunday’s European Cross Country Championships, while a more in-depth look ahead to the action can be found in the December 11 edition of Athletics Weekly magazine

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