Sarah Mercier, Sara Queripel and young Katie Rowe track the island’s top women’s distance runner in the Fauxquets Valley mud. (Picture by Phil Hall, 0872754)

THREE races, three different winners.

The 2009 Fusion winter cross-country league, the premier off-road event of the athletics calendar, is proving to be more intriguing than ever, as well as better supported.

Lee Garland took the honours on this occasion over six punishing mile laps at Fauxquets Valley and, with it, shot to the top of the Division One standings with two races remaining.

Garland had things much his own way on Saturday, big rival Steve Dawes watching from the sidelines less than 24 hours before he made his challenge for the Jersey half-marathon honours.

Alan Rowe, who won the opening race, was also on the sidelines, arming himself with a stopwatch as he nurses his way back to fitness after an Achilles injury.

Garland led from roughly the halfway point of the opening lap in the soggiest extremes of the valley and he was happy to get through after feeling a little under the weather in the week.

‘I just about had enough in me,’ he said afterwards.

‘I was trying to be careful at the start as it it is always a tough one and it was also very windy.

‘But halfway through the first lap I found myself at the front and from then on tried to run my own race.’