Nadia Battocletti crowned a brilliant 2024 as she won her third continental title of the year by winning the senior women’s race at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Antalya, Türkiye on Sunday (8).
And there was a return to form for both 2022 European 5000m champion Konstanze Klosterhalfen of Germany as well as home favourite and four-time previous champion Yasemin Can, who took silver and bronze respectively.
Battocletti completes golden collections
But the plaudits went to the Italian, who claimed a sensational 5000m/10,000m double in front of an adoring home crowd at the Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships in June.
This latest victory, in addition to the Olympic 10,000m silver she won this summer, brings an end a superlative championships year for Battocletti.
The result in Antalya also made her the first female - and just the second athlete ever after her male compatriot Andrea Lalli - to win titles in all three age groups at the event, having previously won the women’s U20 title in 2018 and 2019 and then the women’s U23 gold in 2021 and 2022.
Another exam passed
Battocletti won silver last year behind three-time winner Karoline Bjerkeli Grøvdal but In the absence of the Norwegian, who withdrew due to illness earlier this week, the 24-year-old naturally started out as the favourite.
And the University of Trento student, who completed an engineering exam on Thursday, again answered all the questions posed to her.
France’s Manon Trapp was a surprise early leader, a judo exponent who converted to running in 2017, she stretched out to a 50-metre lead in the opening long lap and showed her fighting spirit as she maintained it through second lap.
By then, the chasing pack had begun to break up, but was headed by Battocletti, four-time winner Can and Romania’s Delvine Relin Meringor, with Germany’s Klosterhalfen and Jana van Lent of Belgium also prominent.
However, with two laps to go, Trapp was enveloped by her more illustrious competitors.
On the final lap, the leading pack was whittled down to five with Trapp having been cut adrift. With the final 1510m circuit to navigate, Battocletti wound up the tempo, consistently gaining crucial metres over the hills and slowly but surely established a gap between herself and her rivals.
Allowing herself a broad smile in the closing strides, she broke the tape in 25:43 with Klosterhalfen matching her result from two years ago in silver with 25:54 and the 2022 European 10,000m champion Can giving the home fans something to shout about, claiming bronze a further six seconds back.
Meringor was fourth in 26:03 with van Lent a surprising and hugely creditable fifth in 26:04 while the bold Trapp faded to eighth in 26:17.
Adding a cherry to Battocletti’s cake, Italy also won the team title - the first time the Azzurri had ever got a team medal of any description in this category - with Elisa Palmero (13th) and Ludovica Cavalli (19th) scoring 33 points to come home just three points ahead of Great Britain while Belgium repeated their position on home soil in Brussels and finished third.
Afterwards, Battocletti said: "I was thinking before the race that it would be tough. I ran in Alcobendas (in Spain) two weeks ago, the course is different, it's a more technical course. It's tougher than here. So, it was a good test."
On Italy's first ever senior women's team podium place, let alone title, she said: "We made history. I'm so proud of the girls. We ran together since childhood, so we knew each other quite well."
Chris Broadbent for European Athletics