It takes a rare talent to compete for GB in one sport, never mind two.
Peter Molloy’s “first love” as he calls it, is orienteering and he’s already competed for Britain’s international team.
This weekend, however, Molloy will add a second sport to his list whereby he’s gained GB honours: athletics.
The 22-year-old is part of the British team which will race the European Cross-Country Championships in the Turkish city of Antalya tomorrow and he admits that a fortnight after the British trials, where his third place in the under-23 race secured his selection for this weekend’s European Championships, he’s still coming to terms with the fact he’ll soon be able to call himself a two-sport internationalist.
“It’s amazing to be in this team and I’m still quite shocked to have made it. It’ll be exciting to compete at this level as a runner having already done it as an orienteer,” he says.
“A few months ago, making the GB team for these Europeans was definitely the target but as the trials approached, I started to realise just how strong the under-23 category is in Britain. So I then really wrote off my chances of making it to the Europeans.
“So to have made it into the team is so exciting.”
Molloy’s selection hasn’t come entirely out of the blue.
All world-class orienteers are, by necessity, high-level runners and so his training has long lent itself to potentially crossing over into athletics.
It was when the Linlithgow athlete began studying at the University of Cambridge in 2020, though, that his standard of running really began to increase and indeed, a 65-minute half-marathon earlier this year suggested he was in excellent shape.
And with perfect timing for the trials for these European Cross-Country Championships a fortnight ago, the athletics’ gods answered his prayers for rain, with the horrendous weather in the week of the event in Liverpool ensuring that the course was as muddy as one could possibly imagine.
This, however, played right into the hands of Molloy, who was making his Scotland athletics team debut.
“The course being so muddy in Liverpool really suited me so I went into the race just wanting to see how well I could do,” he says
“It was definitely peak mud levels but I really enjoy that. Other people often find that amount of mud very difficult because you can get put off your stride quite badly because it’s less like running and more like thrusting yourself through an absolute quagmire. It’s really, really hard work when there’s so much mud but you have to just keep fighting.”
Molloy will go into tomorrow’s event, at which he’ll compete in the under-23 race, as the lone Scot in the GB team and while he may be inexperienced at international level as a cross-country runner, the fact he’s so at home on the global stage as an orienteer will, he hopes, help control any nerves.
“At major championships, you never quite know how it’ll go so there’s an element of mystery but I like having some unknowns,” he says.
“This is more high-profile than the major orienteering championships I’ve competed in but it’s similar in that you have to make sure you’re not overwhelmed by the standard of athletes. So I can definitely draw on my past experiences in that respect.
“At the end of the day, it’s just a race so I’m hoping that I can remain relatively unfazed while sat the same time, enjoy the fact that I’m running at this level.”
As Molloy looks towards 2025, his sights, he expects, will turn back towards orienteering but he’s far from ruling out further major championship appearances as an athlete either.
“Next summer, I’ll be targeting the big orienteering events like the World and European Championships but the orienteering season is concentrated in the summer months so the cross-country season fits in well with that,” he says.
“I’d love to beat my half-marathon PB too.
“Really, I just love racing and I need the hit of adrenaline that you get from racing so if I’m getting to race for GB in any sport then all the better.”
