ROME – The gun went off in the third of three heats here Friday night in the men’s 100 at the European track and field championships and, as expected, Craig Gill fell behind early and finished last.
It’s not just that Gill finished last in his heat. Twenty-four guys lined up in the three heats. One was DQ’d. That means 23 finished. Gill’s time ended up being 23rd of 23, 11.17 seconds. The guy who was 22nd, Francesco Sansovini of San Marino, was a full 62-hundredths better, in 10.55. There’s a phrase in track for guys like Craig Gill, observed with affection: DFL.
All good. For real.
Craig Gill, 22, runs for Gibraltar. He is living the dream. That 11.17? A season’s best.
Craig Gill of Gibraltar, all smiles after Friday night’s men’s 100 heats at the European championships in Rome
There’s nothing patronizing about this tale. Nothing condescending. Gill is a legit athlete, with a personal best 11-flat in the 100.
Is he going to beat Olympic champ Marcell Jacobs of Italy, who ran 9.8 to win in Tokyo three years ago? Not in this lifetime.
Not the point.
“Just putting my country out there,” Gill said after the race. “Not a lot of people know what Gibraltar is, you know? 30,000 people. Infrastructure? No coach.”
Located at the south of Spain, Gibraltar is a 2.6-square-mile slice of land, dominated by a famous rock, home to – as Gill noted – maybe 30,000 or so people. “One postcode,” he said.
That postcode, where Gill grew up, holds one track. “Which football took over,” he said, meaning soccer.
“Come nationals, it’s not really nationals,” he said, “you’re running against your team. There’s just no competition. It’s impossible to progress as an athlete, to run at this level.”
That is why, when he turned 18, he went to university in the United Kingdom, in Manchester, where he was able to find a group and a coach.
But home is where it is.
“Even if I was quick enough to run for GB,” he said, “I’m from Gibraltar.”
Where they are very proud of Craig Gill. Him running in the Euros — that’s news in the Gibraltar Chronicle:
From the Gibraltar Chronicle, May 31, 2024
Gill runs for a federation that has, to be gracious, limited resource. Here at these European championships, as that photo makes clear, he is a team of one – OK, he and his team manager make two.
“Yeah, it’s me and the team manager. That’s another thing,” he said. In a place like Gibraltar, famed for tourism but hardly track and field, the fortitude to keep at it was, in a word, significant:
“Like, running … and growing up, it was so lonely. So lonely. I’m day in and day out, on my own. Literally, on my own.”
A younger Craig Gill training in Gibraltar // photo courtesy Craig Gill
Out of the blocks on the track in Gibraltar // photo courtesy Craig Gill
At school in Manchester, Gill earned a degree in fire engineering.
Now, he said, “I work a nine-to-five,
“So, yeah, it’s hard. I wake up in the morning, train, go to my nine-to-five. Train again, after. It’s a hard balance.”
Girlfriend Georgie Beavis, 23, who is getting into law, has been hugely supportive, he said.
“I’m grateful to have her with me,” he said.
It’s a quirk of the track and field scene that Gill can run representing Gibraltar at events such as the European and world championships – at the Eugene 2022 worlds, in the prelim round, he ran 11.24, placing 15th, when the top 14 moved on. “Never the luck for me,” he said.
He didn’t run last year at the world championships in Budapest because he was hurt.
“You can be so physically fit in track and field. If you’re not mentally there, it’s impossible, isn’t it? Yeah,” he said, “I mean, I like to think I’m mentally strong.”
The Olympics this year in Paris? No.
Gibraltar is not one of the world’s 206 recognized national Olympic committees.
“I’m humbled to see that even in my training group in the UK, so many people are quicker than me. They don’t get this opportunity. So,” he said, “I’m forever grateful to Gibraltar’s AAA, and they’re so supportive.”
All the same, he said, “It’s a shame. I’ll never get to see the Olympics in my life. Literally. Unless I run for GB. Which is impossible. But, you know. I know my place.”
And that place is home: “I don’t want to run for GB … even if I was quick enough to run for GB, I’m from Gibraltar. I want Gibraltar on the map.”