Fitzgerald, who recently smashed Zola Budd’s national under-20 indoor 3,000m record by 16 seconds, joins Olympic 1500m bronze medallist Georgia Hunter Bell and world indoor pole vault champion Molly Caudery in a 44-strong British squad for Apeldoorn in the Netherlands.
However, despite her tender years Fitzgerald, who is studying sport and exercise science at Exeter University, has already made plenty of headlines – most notably in 2023 when, as a 16-year-old, she turned down the chance to compete for Britain in the world cross-country championships in Australia because of her concerns for the environment over flying such a long way.
But Fitzgerald has gone from strength to strength since, winning back to back European U-20 cross country championships and running the eighth fastest 3,000m time in Europe this year behind another Briton, Melissa Courtney-Bryant.
Her eco-friendly credentials have led to her being labelled “the Greta Thunberg of sport”, which were further enhanced when it emerged that in December 2022 she took more than 20 hours to travel to the European Cross Country Championships in Turin from her home in Devon.
“When I started running, the prospect of me competing in the world cross country championships would have seemed merely a dream,” she wrote in a letter to Athletics Weekly.
