Young British distance runner puts environment ahead of athletics ambition but it won’t stop her making her mark in the sport

Innes FitzGerald’s decision to reject the chance to race at the World Cross Country Championships in Bathurst next month because it would involve flying from the UK to Australia has divided opinion. Some have applauded her stance whereas others have ridiculed it.

Criticisms range from “the plane will fly with or without her” to “she sounds brainwashed” to “she may as well hang up her spikes now”.

After all, the European Under-20 Championships this year are in Jerusalem – the same city she refused to consider flying to last year for the European Under-18 Championships – whereas the next World Under-20 Championships are in Peru in 2024.

The 16-year-old has been running competitively for little over a year but has shown immense potential. Last summer she sliced nine seconds off Jess Warner-Judd’s UK under-17 record for 3000m of 8:59.67 when winning the British schools title in Belfast.

After claiming a Mini London Marathon title in October she enjoyed a runaway victory at the British Athletics Cross Challenge in Liverpool in November, beating much older athletes as she stormed around Sefton Park. Then, at the European Cross Country Championships, she once again blasted into the lead before finally being overhauled in the latter stages as Maria Forero of Spain, who is three years older than FitzGerald, took gold with the Briton fourth.

The news that FitzGerald had taken the train from her home near Exeter in Devon to Turin in Italy that weekend began as a crazy rumour but it soon emerged to be true. She had taken overnight coach and then train to the championships along with a fold-up bike to get from station to station. Given the travel disruptions en route she later admitted it may have affected her performance.

It has not affected her decision to put the environment ahead of her athletics ambitions, though. On the prospect of racing in Australia next month she says “the reality of the travel fills me with deep concern”.

Given this, is she wasting her time trying to be an athlete? Not at all.

For starters she won an international cross-country race in Belgium on Sunday (Jan 22) when she finished a full minute ahead of fellow English athlete Rebecca Flaherty at the Belgian CrossCup meeting in Hannut, a small city near Brussels.

Belgian CrossCup U20 women's top three (l to r) – Rebecca Flaherty, winner Innes FitzGerald, Sophie Nicholls. #CrossCup #Hannut

? https://t.co/14IiwpsYt1 pic.twitter.com/282OisqVCr

— AW (@AthleticsWeekly) January 22, 2023

History tells us that you do not need to travel far to have an impact in the sport either. Many record-breaking performances have been set by athletes competing on their doorstep. You do not need to travel the world to make your mark as a runner.

There are loose comparisons here with Zola Budd. As a teenager she was forced to compete on home soil due to her native South Africa being banned from world athletics due to its apartheid policies of racial segregation. Yet one month before her 17th birthday she ran a world junior 3000m record of 8:39.00 in Durban in 1983 followed by a world junior 5000m mark of 15:24.08 just days later in Stellenbosch.

Budd was a prodigy, as she went on to set a world senior 5000m record of 15:01.83 aged just 17 – once again without setting any of her shoe-less feet outside her own country. But interestingly her best 3000m set shortly after turning 16 was 9:03.5, which is four seconds slower than FitzGerald ran last summer at a very similar age.

Budd eventually began running on the international circuit and gained notoriety for racing against Mary Decker at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. Coincidentally, the LA Games in 2028 would be a logical target for FitzGerald, assuming she avoids injuries and continues to improve.

“Good luck getting there,” said another social media critic in response to FitzGerald’s eco-friendly travel tactics. Don’t forget, though, only a few decades ago international athletes used to go to major championships via boat. Take the 1950 Commonwealth Games, for example, where British athletes sailed to New Zealand to compete and kept fit by running around the deck of the boat.

FitzGerald’s stance is also a little reminiscent of triple jump world record-holder Jonathan Edwards, who refused to compete on Sunday during the early part of his career for religious reasons.

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There are surely lessons here for ordinary club level runners and athletes. Many of us are tempted to travel long distances to compete in far-flung destinations, but isn’t it logical to firstly try to win everything on your local home patch before venturing farther afield?

The Paris Marathon, for example, is independently audited at a whopping 26,500 tonnes of CO2e.  “Marathon event organisers must reconsider the dynamics surrounding attracting international participants if they genuinely want to lower the carbon footprint of their events,” concluded the 2021 study, The Carbon Footprint of Marathon Runners: Training and Racing.

Why travel hundreds of miles to run a marathon if you can’t even come close to winning a local event taking place on your doorstep first?