Studies & training all in a day's work for Griggs

It's Saturday morning and Nick Griggs is doing his normal thing with Mark Kirk's training group at the Mary Peters Track in south Belfast.

With Nick doing his A Levels next summer and all the preparations required for that, it's a busy year for a young man who will turn 18 later this month, but as ever he seems to be taking it all in his stride, with a gap year in the planning when he does complete his second-level exams.

"You just have to attack the work. Get it all done. Revise and manage your time," smiles the Tyrone athletics talent, who burst on the Irish athletics scene in 2021 by winning the European Under-20 3,000m title when aged only 16.

"Running really helps you do that. You have the discipline of having to go training every day so that makes you disciplined with schoolwork.

"It is tough but this is the last year of my A-Levels. Hopefully then uni...I'm told it might be a wee bit lighter in the sense of it not being so flat out, five days a week, so I'm looking forward to that in two years' time."

Griggs looks in good nick for Turin

Judging by Griggs' performance last month in holding off a strong challenge from Dean Casey to retain his junior men's title at the Irish Cross Country Championships in Donegal, he does indeed look in good nick going into this weekend's European Cross Country Championships in Turin.

But after acknowledging that his pre-race vow 12 months ago that he would chase individual gold on home turf was "realistically never going to happen", it's a more circumspect Griggs this time around as he assesses his prospects.

"The race is going to have unbelievable quality. There are going to be a load of top guys, four or five European record holders…..so to break into that top five is going to be very, very tough.

"Top five and team gold is what I will be setting my goals as in Turin and maybe if I'm good enough, scrape an individual medal but it will be very difficult," adds Nick, who finished 16th in Dublin after a stitch hit him before halfway as the Irish under-20s finished a frustrating one-point behind team winners Great Britain.

Denmark's Alex Christiansen dominated last year and is set to run again, with his compatriot Joel Lilleso, the leading European when finishing sixth in this year's African-dominated World Under-20 3,000m final when Griggs placed ninth, likely to challenge along with Dutch 17-year-old Niels Laros, who produced a remarkable 7:48.25 3,000m in September.

With Griggs, despite his talent, by no means a cross country specialist, Sunday will be his final outing over the hills and through the muck before he begins a busy indoor campaign in the new year which, he hopes, will help him earn a first Irish senior vest at the European Indoor Championships in Istanbul in early March.

Griggs (left) helped Ireland win Under-20 team silver at last year's European Cross Country Championships in Dublin but the Tyrone teenager was disappointed with his 16th place

Griggs showed his liking for indoor running last March when he ran an astonishing 3:56.40 indoor mile in Dublin to smash the European Under-20 record in coming within a whisper of beating Olympic 1500m semi-final Andrew Coscoran, in a race which earned him the Inspirational Performance on Irish Soil honour at the recent national athletics awards.

He is targeting a 3,000m spot in Istanbul although making the Irish team may prove no easy task with the likes of new Irish indoor 5,000m record holder Brian Fay, Darragh McElhinney, Hiko Tonosa and Efrem Gidey all potentially in the selection frame.

"The A standard for the 3,000m is 7:44 which is insane with the B 7:52 but there is a quota points system as well which can earn you qualification so hopefully I can get a few points and make the team," adds Nick, who set his national junior record of 7:53.40 this year in Cork.

Fay has already been in stunning form on the boards in the USA after taking nine seconds off the previous Irish Indoor 5,000m record with a world-class 13:16.77 earlier this week.

The Dubliner is among Irish athletes developed by the US collegiate system but while Griggs is being courted by several universities on the other side of the Atlantic, he is unlikely to go down the route.

'I'm definitely not going to America'

"I'm definitely not going to go to America. Not that I've got anything against it. It's been a great springboard for many Irish athletes and latterly lads like Brian Fay who had success at home and then they got to America and just go to a different level.

"I feel like I've found my long-term coach Mark Kirk here in Belfast and there would be no point going away to America under a different coach because that's not what I want.

"So I've thinking about staying here at Jordanstown or maybe go to Dublin. Hopefully I'll stay here at Jordanstown but somewhere here in Ireland definitely."

• 'Josh will always be with me'

Looking at his overall report card for 2022, Griggs says his outdoor track season was "up and down" after the excitement produced by his remarkable indoor performance in Dublin with an illness in the early part of the summer not helping his progress.

"The World Juniors was a mixed bag. I took a lot of experience with it. It was class to get to run with some of the best in the world with the Africans.

"Overall outdoors, I had a few good races and a few bad races.

"I feel like a few of my PBs and times from last year - especially outdoors - aren't what I know they can be but every runner says that. You have to go out and prove it.

"Hopefully I can get in a good quick race and just hang on the back and run something quick."