The European championship was won by Spain’s Maria Forero.
Ilona Mononen finished third in the under-20 women’s four-kilometer race at the EC Cross-Country Championships in Italy. The race was run in the La Mandria park near Turin.
The European championship was won by Spain Maria Forero three seconds ahead of Norway Ingeborg Östgård and with a difference of four seconds to Monose.
“There are no words to describe the mood. Last year’s fourth place left me with a toothache and now I’ve done everything I could to get a medal. The run could not have gone any better,” Mononen said.
It had been 20 years since the last medal for a Finnish runner at the cross-country European Championships. In 2002 Elina Lindgren ran third in the 20-year-old.
Competitive we ran in the freezing night Jljitita partly on a grass-surfaced route. Mononen started calmly and rose in the last lap on a tough uphill to fight for the medal.
“Fortunately, the platform was hard and not muddy after the night. The top started hard at the beginning, but I thought that the Brit who ran away with Forero would fall, as it happened. I was in the second group and on the last uphill I put everyone in the game, even if I missed the trip. After that it was nothing but downhill, which I ran as hard as I could. At the end, I didn’t know how close the fourth place was, but I just ran with the gleam of the medal in my eyes,” Mononen described in the press release.
In track running, Mononen has won the 3,000 meters in the under-20 European Championships in 2021 and was twice fifth in the World Championships in that age group.
“This medal means a lot to me. I’m not really a cross country runner, but I ran cross country races when I lived in the US. It was great to win a cross-country medal for Finland, when it’s been so long since the last one.”
In the 4 x 1.5 kilometer mixed relay race, Finland was 12th. They ran in the Finnish team Joonas Rinne, Camilla Richardson, Top Raitanen and Viola Westling. The European championship was won by Italy.
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