Hayley Yelling was contemplating retirement after narrowly missing out on qualifying for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games by a cruel 0.14 of a second but the Briton was persuaded by her long-time coach Conrad Milton to extend her running career, which she juggled alongside a full-time job being being a mathematics teacher.
It proved to be a prophetic decision as, just a few months later, the 30-year-old runner added her name to the SPAR European Cross Country Championship roll of honour at the 2004 edition in the Baltic seaside resort of Heringsdorf in Germany.
Yelling had also missed out on the 10,000m qualifying time for the 2000 Olympics by a mere 1.27 seconds and while she had been part of British medal-winning teams at the European Cross Country Championships in the past, Yelling deservedly took the individual plaudits.
And she did it in a sprint finish.
Among those Yelling outpaced in the muddy finishing straight was her friend and compatriot Jo Pavey, who had just missed out on an Athens medal when finishing fifth in the 5000m.
"With 50 metres to go I was convinced I was going to finish in fourth. I thought they were going to outsprint me because I haven't got a sprint finish. I thought 'I can't let Jo beat me, I'm supposed to be the cross country runner'.
“I can't believe it. It is a dream to win after missing out on the Olympics, although it doesn't really make up for it,” a jubilant Yelling told the British magazine Athletics Weekly.
Poland’s former world 3000m steeplechase record-holder Justyna Bak separated the two British runners by taking silver in 18:07, one second behind Yelling and one second ahead of Pavey with Romania’s Mihaela Botezan the unlucky one to miss out in the sprint finish, finishing fourth.
Despite Great Britain fielding two of the three individual medallists, a Portuguese team including 1996 Olympic 10,000m champion Fernanda Ribeiro and future European cross country champion Jessica Augusto packed well to win the team title ahead of the British squad with hosts Germany taking bronze, their only medal of the championships.
However, this wasn’t to be Yelling’s only hurrah at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships and the circumstances surrounding her victory five years later in 2009 had very similar parallels.
Only this time, Yelling had retired for good after yet another near miss at the 10,000m qualifying time for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games before she was coaxed back to racing the following autumn, and then winning Great Britain's European cross country trial race in Liverpool off a very limited training programme.
A few weeks later in Dublin, she threw caution to the wind by going out hard from the gun and remained in front to become a most unexpected continental champion and just the second repeat winner of the women’s senior race after her compatriot Paula Radcliffe in 1998 and 2003.
Lebid becomes a cross country great... and a first medal for Farah
Ukraine’s Sergiy Lebid became the most successful athlete in SPAR European Cross Country Championships history n Heringsdorf.
With a dominant and reassured 23-second victory in the senior men’s race, the blonde-haired Lebid took his tally of individual titles up to five to move one ahead of Portugal’s Paulo Guerra who had won four individual titles, including gold at the first two editions in 1994 and 1995.
“The last 500 metres were pretty emotional. I felt really strong in the last 500 metres, and even stronger in the last 200 metres, I felt I could have run for hours. Each victory is very important but this one is the most special,” said Lebid, who went on to win an unprecedented - and potentially unpassable - tally of nine senior gold medals and 12 individual medals overall between 1998 and 2011.
Spain’s Juan Carlos de la Ossa was a distant second in 27:54 as he picked up the second of his three European cross country silver medals while Driss Maazouzi finished third in 28:05, as he would do 12 months later in the Dutch city of Tilburg, but led home France to the team title.
Further down the field in 15th, a then 21-year-old Mo Farah collected his first ever senior medal of any description - the U23 race was only added to the programme in 2006 when Farah, who had taken the U20 silver in 2001, won the individual senior title - as the second counter of Great Britain’s bronze medal-winning team.
Hungary’s Barnabas Bene won his first of two U20 titles in the men’s U20 race while Türkiye’s Binnaz Uslu was crowned women’s U20 champion ahead of Ancuta Bobocel who led Romania to the team title.
Steven Mills for European Athletics