Fantastic Victory for Fontana in the 5000m

After a shaky start to the season, Sean Fontana of Victoria Park City of Glasgow dominated in his debut 5000m at the Scottish National Athletics Championship, taking top podium position with a new personal best of 14:32.98.

Fontana maintained good pace in difficult windy conditions throughout the 12.5 laps remaining in the head of the group up until the final lap. It looked to be his former training partner, Craig Ruddy, who was taking home the Gold; holding a fifteen meter lead on Fontana until the 250m mark in the last lap.

Fontana scaling back the gap on the final bend and overtaking Ruddy entering the straight. Sprinting by Ruddy and crossing the line with a clear ten meters. Before this summer season he found that he achieved more in cross country rather than the track. He had been training for 1500m, however could not reach his full potential in the event and moved to the 5000m. Preferring training as he trained “like a warrior”, but could never transfer this to competition- seeing the difference between a 5K in training with recovery and competition 5K.

Noticing that he wasn’t performing to the best of his abilities at the start of the season he decided with his coach, Craig Winrow that they were going back to basics and improve on his fitness, as he said “strength outlasts speed.” His training down south has faced some ups and downs as he and his coach have tried to find which style of training suits him best between long and short reps.

Finding that happy medium of stamina and sharpening his finishing with strength. The training has obviously shown to have paid off with this big win as before he was struggling to make it to finals in the 1500m.

This is not the only thing the twenty-three year old is known for. At the Kelvin Hall last race, Mo Farah announced to the crowd after running that he would be signing autographs for a short period before doing a training session afterwards. Fontana had only just arrived at the Kelvin Hall after training to watch the race.

Well Fontana lifted out his own spikes from the crowd and shouted to Farah saying he could pace him round for 200m. The somewhat bewildered Farah looked to Fontana wondering if this was some fan or an actual runner. In reply Farah shouted on him asking for his times, to which he replied “3:55 for the 1500m”. Farah gave him the thumbs up, saying that Fontana’s time was good enough and that he should join him.

In disbelief Fontana was pushed by the crowd to join him. After the first 200m together Fontana was telling the Double Olympic Gold medallist to slow down as he had run the 200m in 28 seconds, as if they were just together training as usual. This seems to have been a great foreshadowing as Sean Fontana became Scottish Champion on Sunday 11 August 2013, the day after Mo Farah takes Gold for the 10,000m in the Moscow IAAF World Championships, possibly leading onto greater things in the future?

By Adam Smith Glasgow Gaelic