Efrem Gidey became the first ever Irish winner at the European 10,000m Cup, with Jana Van Lent repeating a similar feat for Belgium in the women’s race in a thrilling evening’s racing at Pace, France on Saturday (24).

Gidey avenged Valentin Gondouin, who pipped Gidey to half-marathon bronze at last month’s Brussels-Leuven 2025 European Running Championships. Goudouin took silver this time, and his French international teammate, Felix Bour, took bronze. The duo led France to team gold. 

Jana Van Lent dominated the women’s race, taking control around the halfway point, winning ahead of France’s Alessia Zarbo and Belgium teammate Chloe Herbiet, who won the women’s half marathon at Brussels-Leuven. Belgium took the women’s team title.  

Gidey and Bour set early pace

Gidey and Bour laid their stalls out early and were the only athletes to stay within the slipstream of pacemaker Martin Kiprotich of Uganda, going through 5km at 27:30 pace.

As Kiprotich stepped off the track with 10 laps (4km) remaining, Goudouin and Belgium’s Simon Debognies, a European U23 and U20 silver medallist over 5000m, joined Gidey and Bour to form a leading quartet.

Spain’s Ilias Fifa flourished briefly to create a lead pack of five, but he lost ground with eight laps to go and ultimately failed to finish. But the remaining four ran in train formation right through to the penultimate lap, with Debognies doing the bulk of the work at the front.

Decisive break

But with 600m to go, Gidey made a decisive break that his opponents could not counter. It left the French duo and Debognies to fight out silver and bronze. The Belgian paid for his bold front running and had a watching brief over the final lap as Gidey, Gondouin and Bour pulled away.

Debognies did, however, have the satisfaction of a new personal best of 27:48:40 in fourth. He also spearheaded Belgium to a team silver behind France with 1:24:51.35. France’s third finisher was sixth-placed Simon Bedard in 28:06.72. 

Debognies’ supporting cast members were Clément Deflandre, who won the B race in 28:30.91 and Dorian Boulvin (13th, 28:32.04). Spain picked up bronze, thanks to a solid team effort from Juan Antonio Pérez (10th, 28:26.39), Jesús Ramos (11th, 28:26.89) and Aarón Las Heras (12th, 28:31.43), combining for a total time of 1:24:58.61.