Why I'm a little bit cross about World Cross

Aarhus, 2019. Edinburgh, 2008. Limerick, 1979.

Just three of the World Cross Country Championships I’ve heard mentioned in the last 48 hours which had a bigger crowd and better atmosphere than Belgrade this weekend.

But they are just the ones we remember. The ones we were at. The ones that are at the forefront of our Eurocentric minds.

In truth, we could probably have thrown out any one of the previous 44 editions. 

Even Amman in Jordan had a fully kitted-out, all-male, rent-a-crowd.

And Kampala (2017), the one all the cross-country geeks wish they’d been at, probably tops them all. 

Kampala is significant for two reasons. Firstly, it was the Ugandan team, with their flags and enthusiasm, who were at least attempting to bring some noise to the silent fields of Belgrade on Saturday.

And secondly, the crowd in Kampala were mostly local. 

It appears that when Belgrade, admirably, sat down with World Athletics and agreed to take on this task, they obviously discussed how best to get the job done in six months. Engaging with locals or considering that there may actually be some spectators was obviously not part of the plan. 

Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if the phrase ‘sod spectators’ (or a more colourful version thereof) wasn’t thrown about.

Because they made absolutely no effort to get them there.

Not even the hundreds of local adults and children that passed by the course on their bikes on Saturday. 

They talk about growing the sport, throwing out all sorts of radical ideas that take something away from the sport as we know and love it. Yet we are not doing the very, very basics.

The spectators were treated to a portaloo in 2009

There was nothing on the event website aimed at spectators; not even a mention that the event was free to attend.

There were no spectator toilets, no refreshments, no merchandise. No spectator experience.

We couldn’t hear any of the commentary or announcements. Not the starting gun. Not the national anthems.

We couldn’t get to half the course, and there were large parts that couldn’t be seen at all, including the start and finish.

The big screen (yes, there was one), could only be seen by those special enough to have accreditation. 

Strings had to be pulled so that parents and coaches of medal-winning athletes could make it to their medal ceremony.

Any of those parents and children on their bikes curious enough to stop would have had no idea that they were at the greatest footrace on earth.

Why do we waste precious energy trying to ‘grow the sport’ when we disregard both the serious fan who has parted with their hard-earned cash to be there, or those who are at the venue anyway and might just be inspired if they had any idea what was going on?

Saturday was my level of niche athletics events. I had a great time. 

But this is the greatest event on earth.

And it’s not just about me. 

After so much effort in recent years, and at least three consecutive editions which were in danger of being called spectacles, this is a disappointment. A step backwards. A nail.

Please don’t let it be so.

European Cross Country Championships Ones to Watch

Tomorrow the 2022 edition of the European Cross Country Championships will take place in La Mandria Park, just outside Turin in Italy’s Piemonte region. The fields look particular strong across all the age groups, with all 6 individual champions from Dublin back to defend their titles.

Here are some of the athletes to watch out for across the U23 and senior races.

La Mandria awaits

U23 women

The U23 women’s race could well be the highlight of the championships. The top 6 from last year’s race, which included multiple Olympians, are all still age-eligible, and five of them will toe the line in Turin!

They will be joined by the U20 race winner in Dublin, GBR’s Megan Keith, who finished second to Jess Warner-Judd (4^th senior last year) in the British senior trials; putting her among the contenders.

Home favourite, and defending champion Nadia Battocletti, is, however, the one to beat. She won the U20 titles in 2018 and 2019, and was 7^th in the Olympic 5000m in Tokyo. She finished 6^th and 2^nd in recent World Cross Country Tour Gold events in Atapuerca and Alcobendas, respectively.

Yasemin Can is the only female to have won more individual titles than Battocletti at this event, and if the Italian was to win, and the Turk to fail to do so, they would draw level on four titles each.

Mariana Machado won bronze last time around, and the Portuguese champion will look to add further to her medal haul after also winning bronze at U20 on home soil in 2019. She finished 10th in the World Cross Country Tour Gold event in Sevilla three weeks ago.

Manon Trapp was 4^th in Dublin and will be looking for her first individual medal at this level. The Frenchwoman, who has a black belt in Judo, finished 5^th in the 5000m at the European U23 Championships last year.

Ireland’s hopes lie with Sarah Healy, who’ll be looking to improve on her 5^th place last time out. Sarah was an emphatic winner of the Irish Championship/trials in Donegal three weeks ago, and will be chasing down her first European cross country medal.

Not to be ruled out is Battocletti’s Italian teammate, Anna Arnaudo, also a year older and stronger, who finished 6^th in Dublin and won silver over 10,000m at the European U23 Championships last summer. Arnaudo was a clear winner of the test event on this course in November.

Emma Heckel (Germany) won bronze in the U20 category in Dublin. She finished 38^th at the recent NCAA Div 1 Championship. Amina Maatoug (NED) and Yasmin Marghini (GBR) who finished just in front of her in Stillwater also race.

Klara Lukan, last year’s silver medallist, and Izzy Fry, 2022 World University Cross Country champions, are notable absentees. Lukan doesn’t appear to have raced since the spring, and Fry just missed out on making the British team, but is named as reserve.

The team title should, on paper, be a mighty battle between Italy and GBR. With only three to score, and with two major contenders in their ranks, Italy will be looking to retain their title on home ground.

For the Brits, Keith will be ably supported by Marghini, Mid-Ulster’s Grace Carson, Alex Millard and others. GBR won this time title 9 of the first 11 times it was held, but their last win was in 2018. GER, NED and ITA won in ‘18, ‘19 and ‘21 respectively.

Trapp led the France to silver in Dublin and will be joined by Flavie Renouard, the European U23 steeplechase champ, who finished 18^th last time. The three scoring members of the German team who won gold in the U20 race in Dublin also compete in the U23 race this time around.

Danielle Donegan, Laura  Mooney, Aoife Ó'Cuill, Jodie McCann and Niamh O'Mahoney join Healy in the Irish team. Healy, Donegan and McCann were the scoring members of the team that finished 5^th last year.

U23 Men

This race is also almost guaranteed to be a cracker. Charlie Hicks (GBR), Darragh McElhinney (IRL) and Ruben Querinjean (LUX), the individual medallists last time out, are all racing again, as are the 4^th, 6^th, 7^th, 8^th and 9^th placers from Dublin.

Hicks is the defending champion, and after his recent NCAA Division 1 title, he will start as favourite.

But Hicks has already been beaten by one Irishman this season (Brian Fay finished ahead of him at NCAA West regionals), and McElhinney will be hoping to make that two. McElhinney the Irish Senior champion, would so dearly love to cap off a fine year with an individual European title.

Don’t think, though, that these two are the only ones to watch. In a team stacked with talent, McElhinney isn’t even the only individual medal contender among the Irish contingent, so let’s start with them!

Efrem Gidey won bronze in the U20 race in Lisbon in 2019, and while his progress has been hampered by injury, he is coming off a fine summer during which he finished 6th in the 10,000m at the European Champs in Munich. He was 5^th in Donegal.

Keelan Kilrehill, 6^th in Dublin, and the 2^nd Irish scorer that day, is also a serious contender. He was only 6 seconds off a medal then, and will be looking to challenge his teammates for bragging rights.

Shay McEvoy, who finished 23rd at NCAAs three weeks ago, will be looking to spring a surprise. Jamie Battle (44^th last year) and Thomas McStay (who missed Dublin on medical grounds) complete the Irish team.

Other individual contenders include Querinjean who finished just three seconds behind McElhinney in Dublin. He finished 3^rd in the CrossCup race in Mol in October. Last year he won Luxemburg’s first Euro Cross medal; could he add their first title in Turin?

Magnus Tuv Myhre (NOR) was fourth in Dublin, and is the Norwegian Cross County Champion! He finished just a place behind Gidey in the 10,000m final in Munich this summer.

Antoine Senard (FRA), Aarón Las Heras (ESP) and Zak Mahamed (GBR), 7^th, 8^th and 9^th respectively in Dublin, are also all back. Las Heras was 26^th at NCAAs (Div I), Mahamed was the leading U23 at the British trails, and Senard, who didn’t race outdoors this season, was 6^th in Mol in October.

Pol Oriach (ESP) and Andrii Atamanium (UKR) move up to the U23 category after finishing 4^thand 5^th in the U20 race in Dublin last year.

Etson Barros, 2^nd in the 3000m steeplechase at the 2021 European U23 Championships, is a member of the Portuguese team.

It’s difficult, from this biased perspective, not to imagine the Irish team defending their team title, even on a mediocre day and even without the home advantage; they’re certainly the team the others will have their eyes on.

But the winning margin over the British team last year was only 3 points, and with Hicks, Mahamad and Rory Leonard who finished 16^th last year, all back in their team, it may not be the green whitewash everyone is expecting. 

Some sharp rises and falls will help sort champions from the also-rans

Senior women

The senior women’s race includes the top 7 from the 2021 race, along with a 4-time champion and other in-form athletes. The most interesting element here, however, will be the team competition; on paper a three-way battle.

Karoline Bjerkeli Grøvdal (NOR) is the defending champion, and will be looking to add to her already enviable Euro Cross record. She already has more individual medals than any other female at this event, having finished on the podium on 8 of her previous 9 appearances.

Grøvdal finished 8^th in the 5000m at the World Championships in Eugene this summer, but was a DNF over the same distance in Munich. She’s run some low-key road races in Norway in the run up to this event.

Yasemin Can (TUR) went into Dublin looking for her fifth consecutive title but, short of fitness, she finished just 14^th. The European 10,000m champion finished 8th in the World Cross Country tour in Atapuerca in Nov (behind Teferi and Battocletti) but won in Sevilla a week later.

Meraf Bahta (SWE), has also been a medallist on multiple occasions. She won bronze in 2014, and silver in 2017 and 2021, but missed Eugene and Munich due to injury. Bahta served a backdated one-year doping suspension in 2018/19 for failing to give whereabouts information three times within 12 months.

Alina Reh (GER) last year added an individual medal to the medals she’d previously won at U20 and U23 level. She finished 2^nd at the European 10,000m cup and 8^th over the same distance in Munich, but struggled after her DNF in the 5000m there. She did, however, win the German trial event recently.

Jess Warner-Judd (GBR) finished 4^th last year and will be looking to go at least one better to add to her medals at U20 (silver, 2014) and U23 (bronze, 2016). She won the British trials in Nov, after competing in the 10,000m at World Champs (where she also did the 5,000m), Commonwealth Games and Euro Champs this summer.

European 5000m champion Konstanze Klosterhalfen (GER) finished just two places behind her teammate in Dublin last year, and has yet to add a senior medal to her Euro Cross collection. She won the Valencia half marathon in October in a swift 1:05:41.

Selamawit Teferi (ISR) was 7^th last year. She finished top 8 in both the 5000m and 10,000m in Munich, and was 4^th (and first European) in the World Cross Country Tour Gold race in Atapuerca in November.

Sweden’s Sarah Lahti hasn’t featured since finishing 6^th in the U23 race way back in 2015 but with wins in Mol and Tilburg already this autumn she must surely be in contention for her first top 10 as a senior.

If Bhata, Mengsteab and Lahti are all on form, Sweden won’t be beaten in the team race. They, however, have little back up and had to go all the way back to 30^th place for their third scorer to take bronze last year.

And if any of the Swedish three falter, Germany and Great Britain, who both have more depth in their squads, will be ready to pounce.

In addition to Reh and Klosterhalfan, Germany has Hannah Klein, a 14.51 5000m runner, and 2:26:50 marathoner Miriam Dattke who won bronze in the U20 race in 2017 and finished 4^th in the Marathon in Munich in August.

Warner-Judd will be supported in the British team by Jess Gibbon and Abbie Donnelly who finished 11^th and 12^th last year, the Euro indoor 3000m champion Amy-Eloise Markovc (who finished 4^th U23 in 2017), and Cari Hughes and Poppy Tank, who’ve previously finished top 10 in the U20 and U23 categories, respectively.

With the withdrawal of Ciara Mageean, 2^nd at the Irish Championships in November, the Irish team certainly look weaker, but they now contain 6 athletes who’ve been on previous medal-winning teams at either U23 or senior level.

Roisin Flanagan and Aoibhe Richards were scoring members of the team which finished 4^th last year, but in a closely-matched team, any 3 of the 6 (Michelle Finn, Ann-Marie McGlynn, Mary Mulhare and Eilish Flanagan being members) could score this time around.

Senior men

Jakob Ingebrigtsen. There, that was easy.

Joking aside, Ingebrigtsen is the defending champion, undefeated in 5 appearances at Euro Cross, Olympic Champion, World Champion, European champion at 1500m and 5000m, and actually still eligible for the U23 race here. But if 2022 has thought us anything, it’s thought us that he is beatable.

As with the women’s race, 7 of the top 10 from Dublin return, though we also need to look elsewhere for Ingebrigtsen’s likely challengers.

Yemaneberhan Crippa (ITA) didn’t finish in Dublin last year, but won silver behind Kaya in 2019 to add to his double U20 titles from 2014 and 2015 and his U23 bronze in both 2016 and 2017. He is the European 10,000m champion.

Aras Kaya (TUR), the 2016 and 2019 champion, was second to Ingebrigtsen last time. He was 3^rd at the European 10,000m cup in May but only 16^th in Munich.

Belgium’s Michael Somers finished 5^th in Dublin, and was 2^nd in the Cross Cup race in Mol in late October.

Isaac Kimeli, also from Belgium, finished 9^th in Dublin, but won silver in Tilburg in 2018, and was the U23 champion back in 2016.

Yann Schrub (FRA) finished 6^th in Dublin and completed the French scoring team that day. He finished 3^rd to Crippa in the European 10,000m championships in Munich.

Nassim Hassaous (ESP) was 7^th last year and has finished top 8 in the four Spanish-based World Cross Country Tour gold events so far this season.

Brian Fay (IRL) was 10^th last year, and looks in good shape coming in this race after recently breaking the Irish indoor 5000m record. He finished 13th at the NCAA Div 1 Champs in Stillwater in November (25 places higher than last year!) and beat Hicks to take the NCAA North-West regional title.

Mohamed Katir (ESP) is an interesting entry. The European 5000m silver medallist and Olympic finalist has undoubtable speed, but is, as yet, unproven over the country. He finished 6th, and best of the Spaniards, at the World XC Tour even in Sevilla three weeks ago.

Emile Cairess (GBR) is another with top 10 potential. His 1:00:32 half marathon in October emphatic British trials win two weeks ago certainly suggest that he’s in the shape of his life. His best Euro Cross result is an 8^th place in the U23 race in 2018.

The race also features 2018 champion Filip Ingebrigtsen (NOR), who, like Crippa, failed to finish in Dublin.

The home team will also have European Steeplechase bronze medallist Osama Zoghlami among their ranks. And speaking of steeplechase, the European champion, Topi Raitanen (FIN) will also race.

Elzan Bibic (SRB) won silver at U23 level in 2019 and bronze in the 2018 U20 race. A win in Tilburg (World XC Tour silver) in November, suggests that while he may be ready to make a mark on the senior race this time around.

German Champion Samuel Fitwi Sibhatu won U23 silver in 2018 and finished 5^th senior in 2019. His teammate Davor Aaron Bienenfeld was 14^th in Stillwater.

French trio Jimmy Gressier, Hugo Hay and 8 Felix Bour who finished 3^rd, 4^th and 8^th respectively in Dublin, will not race this year, opening up the team competition somewhat. The Spanish team, who won silver last time, looks particularly strong, but a number of teams will be in the shake up for the minor medals.

In addition to Katir and Hassaous, the Spanish have Carlos Mayo - silver in 2014 (Jun), 2015 & 2016 (U23), 11^th in Dublin and 13^th in Eugene (10,000m); Abdessamad Oukhelfen - U23 bronze in 2019, and 12^th last year; Roberto Alaiz - 7^th in the senior race way back in 2015 and Sergio Paniagua - 2^nd recently in Alcobendas.

With potential top 10 finishers in the form of Somers and Kimeli, Belgium will look to their third scorer to improve on last year’s 5^th place. Robin Hendrix, 15^th back in 2018, looks like their best hope of making the podium.

The Irish team were just 4 points off a medal last year, and must fancy their chance at silverware this time around. Supporting Fay will be Hiko Tonosa Haso (13th last year), Cormac Dalton and Barry Keane who were just behind Fay in Stillwater, and Peter Lynch and Pierre Muchan, 3^rd and 4^th respectively at the recent Irish Championships.

The British team were only 6^th last year, but cannot be discounted. If Cairess gets anywhere near the medals, then the likes of Mahamed Mahamed (3^rd U20 in 2016), Ben Connor (top 10 2017 & 2019), Jack Rowe (18^th last year), infamous club runner Ellis Cross and Hugo Milner could help them to the podium.

Norway, meanwhile, have not two, but three Ingebrigtsens. Henrik won the U23 title in 2012, and finished 18^th in Dublin. The brothers will be backed up by Narve Nordas, 25^th last year; Jacob Boutera a steeplechase finalist in Munich, and Per Svela.

There will be blood!

A note on the U20 races and mixed relay

I didn’t preview the junior races last year, and I haven’t planned on this year. Some of them are still children, and I always feel they already have enough pressure from themselves, yet alone adding to that.

In the interest of managing expectations, it is, however, worth noting the strength and depth in both races, but especially in the U20 men’s race where all three medallists from 2021 start. There are a couple of Irish athletes with the potential to at least think about the podium, but if there isn’t medals, then it may not be because they’ve had an off day.

And there’s no way I’m going to wade through the runners and riders in the mixed relay. Anything could happen there!

Now, why don't you have a go?

Think you can do a better job at prediction the senior results? Why not have a go at #FantasyEuroCross. Just select who you think will win all the senior medals, and see how you get on.

You can enter here now.

Update: Bhata and Kaya are both late withdrawls.

If you trample on my dreams, don’t be surprised when I stop dreaming

My earliest memory of the World Cross Country Championships was on March 21^st 1992. I was sitting in the back of the Lada, along with my three brothers, on our way to visit Granny, as was normal for a Sunday afternoon. My mum, eager not to miss any significant sporting result, had the radio on, and news was coming through that Catriona McKiernan had won a silver medal in Boston. Her Irish teammate, Sonia O’Sullivan, had finished seventh.

I hadn’t even run my first cross country race at that time – I still believed then that the lunchtime kickabouts with the boys in our small country primary school was going to catapult me to Wexford GAA stardom – but for some reason that news stuck with me. My memory may be romantically selective, but I can’t remember too many other sporting results from those days. Ok, so Italia ’90 was pretty big, the Wexford hurlers always seemed to lose, and Barry McGuigan won some significant boxing match very late one night. But apart from that, nothing.

I couldn’t have comprehended then what Catriona or Sonia had just achieved, nor could I have imagined the success that lay ahead for them both. Still, something told me that we were punching well above our weight on the world cross country running scene.

Women participating and achieving in sport had already been normalised for me about two decades before I became aware that there are barriers preventing females from competing in competitive sport. And, more importantly, when I started running 10 months later, I had something to aspire to.

Who’s apathy?

The World Cross Country Championships will take place tomorrow in Kampala, Uganda, and there won’t be a single Irish representative at the event. Despite our women’s team finishing fifth four years ago in Poland and winning European team bronze medals twice since, the 2017 edition of the world’s greatest distance race never seemed to register on the Athletics Ireland radar.

The apathy of the athletes will of course be blamed, but the problem is bigger than that. The lack of commitment to send athletes to this event was so great that the Athletics Ireland selection policy document – which appeared on the High Performance section of the governing body’s website as an afterthought some time in December – contains the incorrect distances for the senior race.

With other competitive opportunities available to athletes, selection criteria along the lines of ‘we’ll send you if we think you’re good enough’ does nothing to secure their commitment. And with the bar for good enough being so high (top 20) that only two-time European Champion Fionnuala McCormack has surpassed it since 2005, is it any wonder that athletes fail to set their sights on the event? 2013 was the only time since 2008 that a scoring team, in any category, was sent. Indeed Ireland have only sent a full senior women’s team three times since they last medalled in 2002; that’s less than a handful of times in the memories of the very athletes we’d be expecting to make this their dream!

Brexit

While the World Cross Country Championships has long been a precarious dream for the Irish distance runner, the rapid, downward spiral of British interest can be pinpointed to a single monumental selection error in 2010. Despite a similarly vague selection policy to the one seemingly adopted by the Irish and an uncertainty over what exactly needed to be achieved, athletes went into the trial event that year full of hope. The top three in the senior men’s race – Mo Farah and Andy Vernon, along with Mumin Gala, who was not eligible for selection – were well ahead of the field. Mike Skinner followed. Next came a large group of talent, young and old, in an exciting and ever-changing battle for the remaining places in the top six. Phil Hinch, James Walsh, and a 19 year old James Wilkinson eventually out smarted and out ran their rivals, putting themselves in prime position for selection.

Three days later Hinch and Walsh learned that they were not included in the team. They didn’t receive so much as a phonecall to inform them that only Farah, Vernon, Skinner and Wilkinson would be sent to Poland. In summary, they were too old and had not yet achieved enough in the sport to be part of the team.

There went Hinchie’s lifetime dream, and along with it the dreams and aspirations of those who looked on in admiration as the hard work finally looked to be paying dividends for the 31-year-old.

Britain will have no representatives in the senior men’s race tomorrow.

It’s not the taking part, it’s the winning that counts

Many ‘experts’ within British and Irish athletics believe that it’s impossible for Europeans to be competitive at this event any longer; that if you’re not going to be at the head of the field then there’s no point in competing, and, most worryingly, that if black people are dominating a world championship, then something needs to be done at a global level to ‘fix’ it.  

If a young Irish athlete happens to be watching the World Championships tomorrow, like I once did, and fails to be inspired or motivated by it, it won’t be because the kids at the front are black, or because the Irish athletes are not high enough to be competitive. It’ll be because the complete lack of Irish representatives suggest that they may never get the opportunity to take on those young men and women from East Africa; because they’ll have been constantly told that this isn’t an event that they should aspire to; and because they’ll be disillusioned to death with the uninspiring, poorly informed commentary which feeds the vicious circle that has become European interest (or disinterest) in World Cross Country, at every available opportunity.

I never achieved my dream of racing at the World Cross Country Championships, but at least I had, for a while, the opportunity to try. Let's ensure that future generations do too.

Uganda is not on Mars

If recent history has taught us anything, it has taught us that many Britons have an egocentric and egotistical view of the world; a view that London is the centre of the universe and that they get to choose how globalism works. Nowhere is that egocentrism more evident than in those lamenting the demise of the World Cross Country Championships and blaming that demise almost purely on the selection of ‘obscure’ venues, outside the UK, for recent editions of the world’s most competitive distance race.

In just 10 days time the global cross country championships will be held in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, a destination BBC pundit Paula Radcliffe would have you believe – if her commentary at the recent European Cross Country Championships is anything to go by – is on Mars. Kampala is, in fact, located a short drive from Entebbe Airport, a substantial international airport that can be reached overnight from the UK. As it turns out Kampala is easier to get to than Iten, Kenya, where many British athletes have been training this winter. And last winter. And the winter before. And the winter before that...

Among the other locations British Eurosport commentator Tim Hutchings – these populous opinions are not confined to those who work for the national broadcaster – recently cited as ‘obscure’ in an article on the topic in Athletics Weekly were Kenya, Poland, China and Jordan.

That’s not obscure, that’s global! And these are, after all, the world championships.

Indeed, with the next edition of the World T&F Championships (London 2017), World Indoor Championships (Birmingham 2018) and European Indoor Championships (Glasgow 2019) all scheduled for Britain, it's nice to see a little bit of diversity.

The arguments don’t stack up

Not only does the lamenting of Radcliffe, Hutchings and others show their very limited world view, their argument that placing the cross country championships outside of Europe has a detrimental effect on participation are not backed up by the facts.

Numbers have obviously declined since the short course championships were scrapped in 2006, and will never return to the numbers seen before the introduction of the shorter races when men’s teams could run nine athletes (with six to score), compared to six (with four to score) these days.

Half the last 10 editions of the championships have been held in Europe, with Asia hosting three championships, and Africa two. If we take the 2007, 2008 and 2009 events – the last time three consecutive championships were held on different continents – as a sample, we’ll notice that the European event, held in Edinburgh, actually had lower participant numbers than Mombassa the previous year and Amman the following year. Yes, the differences are marginal, but the common opinion would have you thinking that all roads lead to Britain only.

2007 Mombassa (Kenya) 63 countries 470 participants
2008 Edinburgh (UK) 57 countries 446 participants
2009 Amman (Jordan) 59 countries 461 participants

And the argument that athletes are not willing to travel as it causes too much disruption to their training doesn't really make sense either. Some athletes were more than willing to recently travel to Australia for a series of events which have zero performance outcomes for them. Nobody turned down their Olympic place because of the travel involved. There will be no shortage of athletes willing to travel to the Bahamas later this year for the World Relay Challenge. And athletes regularly travel to the US for high profile road races, often competing at home and stateside in the same week.

Travel does not appear to be a problem.

Not without their distance-running tradition

If we believe that the Kenyans and Ethiopians are genetically gifted, geographically advantaged, socially motivated and culturally predisposed to distance running success, it shouldn’t come as a shock that Ugandans, who share many of those geographical, social and cultural attributes with their Rift Valley neighbours, have also experienced distance running success on the world stage.

And we’re not talking about success built on athletes being bought from Kenya or Ethiopia here – no, Uganda has some real home-grown talent.

But it wasn’t at the distance events that Uganda first achieved success. John Akii Bua, the 1972 Olympic 400m hurdles champion, is probably the country’s most famous champion. The Malcolm Arnold-coached athlete won the Munich final in a new world record from lane one to become Africa’s first Olympic gold medallist at a distance shorter than 800m, and Uganda’s first global medallist.

Political events at home and abroad blighted the rest of Akii Bua’s career. Uganda, along with most of Africa, boycotted the 1972 Games, meaning that John never got to defend his Olympic title or be part of the much anticipated showdown with Edwin Moses, the US athlete who went on the dominate the event for more than a decade. Meanwhile, back home, political instability made training difficult, and under the reign of dictator Idi Amin, Akii Bua fled to Kenya where he ended up in a refugee camp before being ‘rescued’ by Puma, his shoe sponsor. He never returned to his former level, and the decades of dictatorships, tribal massacres, human rights violations and general political upheaval that followed meant that Ugandan sport never benefited from the legacy of his Olympic win. It took until 1996 for David Kamoga to double Uganda’s Olympic medal tally. Kamoga finished third to Michael Johnson and Rodger Black in the 400m at the Atlanta Games.

Ugandan success in more recent years has come in the longer distances. Stephen Kiprotich, who won the marathon at both the 2012 Olympic Games and the 2013 World Championships, and Moses Ndiema Kipsiro, 2007 World 5000m champion, triple Commonwealth Games champion and two-time World Senior Cross Country Championship medallist, have been leading the way over the last decade.

Boniface Kiprop won the 2006 Commonwealth Games 10,000m title and is a former world junior record holder at the distance. Dorcus Inzikuru won the inaugural women’s 3000m steeplechase title in 2005. And Solomon Mutai won marathon bronze at the 2015 World Championships.

Ugandans have won 19 medals at the World Cross Country Championships (7 individual medals and 12 team medals), more than Britain, the so-called home of cross country, has managed in a much longer period of involvement. Indeed, only Kenya and Ethiopia have won more medals in the event this century!

Not bad for a country that ‘doesn’t understand cross country.’

Moses Kipsiro (right) on his way to individual silver in the senior men's race at the World Cross Country Championships in Amman, Jordan in 2009.

Rumours and accusations; not all rosy

In the corrupt and often vile world of performance sport, Ugandan athletics is not without its controversy. Accusations of inappropriate sexual behaviour against Ugandan Coach Peter Wemali first surfaced in 2014. Members of the national team alleged that he had sexually harassed them during a training camp. The Kenyan-born Wemali allegedly told the athletes that they could run like their East African counterparts if they got pregnant and had terminations at three months. Wemali would ‘kindly’ be the one to impregnate them.

The teenage alleged victims had confided in Kipsiro, the team captain for the event, who asked the Ugandan Athletics Federation (UAF) to fire Wemali. The national governing body instead dropped Kipsiro from the national team for the 2014 World Half Marathon Championships and later cleared Wemali of any wrongdoing, stating that there was no evidence of sexual abuse involving the coach during the said time period, though they did suspend him.

That was not the end of the matter though. Wemali was arrested in April 2015 after three other girls came forward accusing him of rape (later adjusted by the prosecution to aggravated defilement) and infecting them with HIV. While Wemali was in custody for those charges, another three girls, who had been impregnated by the former police coach over the previous five years, came forward.

Meanwhile, Kipsiro revealed that he received death threats, and feared that he may have to flee the country as a result, he believed, of raising the original allegations.

The internet has no news of Wemali or the case against him since mid-August 2015, when his court appearance was delayed for a second time.

One hopes that things haven’t gone quite to avoid the bad publicity around the case detracting from the success of the upcoming championships. The girls of Uganda deserve better than that.

A much deeper problem

It would appear that the ‘obscure’ locations chosen are not necessarily the choice of the IAAF; often it appears they are genuinely the best of the applications received (though I’m not sure how much effort the IAAF puts into encouraging suitable venues to apply). When Kamplala won their bid to host the 2017 event, their sole opposition for the honour was Manama (Bahrain). Although Hammamet (Tunisia) also submitted an expression of interest to host the 2019 edition, only Aarhus (Denmark) formally bid for the event. Similarly, Guiyang (China) was the only venue to bid for the 2015 event. The problem, it would seem, is far deeper than just the selection of host venues.

While Kampala may have been the best of a pair of applications, it must be pointed out that one of the selling points in Uganda’s original bid was the assurance that the proposed National High Altitude Training Centre in Teryet, Kapchorwa District would be completed and available for pre-championship training.

Almost three years later and nearly seven years since President Museveni pledged full government funding for the project, the training centre is still far from completed. Although a substantial amount of compensation has been paid to land owners at the proposed site, phase 1 building has not even started.

Such slow progress is not unusual in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, but the good news is that the course at the Kololo Ceremonial Grounds, where the 42nd edition of the World’s greatest cross country race will be held, recently hosted the Ugandan trials and it will be ready to welcome participants from as far away as Fiji on 26th March.

We can choose to be there, or to be left out.

And so…

So if you’re unhappy that the World Cross Country Championships will be in Kampala in a few weeks, be unhappy because of Uganda’s failure to protect their female athletes and those who stand up for their justice. Be unhappy because you’ve watched The Last King of Scotland and are still angry at what Idi Amin did to his country. Be unhappy because there is still no anti-doping laboratory in East Africa and because the East African authorities consistently fail to address their doping and corruption issues.

But don’t be unhappy just because the championships is not on your doorstep. You might not have gone anyway.

And don’t forget - and this by no means makes it right - that doping, child sexual abuse, corruption and dictatorship are not unique to Africa.

If recent history has taught us anything, it’s taught us that.






Disclaimer
Of course many Brits can see the world beyond the shores of their own great nation, and many have a very open view of the world. Likewise, there are many outside of the UK - in Ireland and elsewhere - with a very limited view of the world. This article is by no means intended to categorise or insult individuals based on nationality. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm making my own attempt at being sensationalist to get a point across. I'd like to think that the reader can take that aspect of the article in the tongue-in-cheek way in which it was intended.

The Art of Cross Country

You could say that cross country is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get next. And that’s the beauty of it.

One week you’re floating over a perfectly dry, pancake flat course, the next you’re struggling up hills and through mud, running into that sort of horizontal wind and rain that seems to save itself for race day.

Often the same venue can throw up completely different experiences two weekends in a row, just to keep things interesting.

At a track race, the smallest unexpected detail - an outside waterjump, finishing in the back straight, no lap times being called out, 30 minute call ups, an official reminding you (still without a valid reason why) to tuck in your singlet, wider than normal bends, flowers in front of the water jump, toilets without toilet paper - can mess with the mind, and cause already simmering pre-race anxieties to boil over.

But at cross country, anything goes.

Hell toilets, never mind toilet paper, are an unexpected luxury!

Cross country is an art form

Summer will be soon enough for carefully timed warm-up routines, racing the clock, analysing progress, cursing headwinds, pollen counts and humidity (often all on the one day) and, when everything goes according to plan, sitting and kicking. Summer will be for formulas and for measuring.

Winter is for conquering hills, measuring performance purely by how much (or little) you had left in the tank, and gently smiling to yourself when, on the last lap, you finally work out the best route through that energy-sapping muddy patch. And if you think you’re going to just sit and kick, you’ll not just risk the result you hoped for, but also much of the fun.

It’s the lack of lap times, kilometre markers, and any form of measurement other than finishing position that makes cross country so enjoyable.

Winter is when the science of running gives way to the art of running!

Twenty-three years of experience

Twenty-three seasons of running cross country has taken me to 22 of Ireland’s beautiful counties, across much of England and Scotland, and occasionally to mainland Europe; it’s swallowed two of my spikes, never to be seen again; it’s taken a toe nail; and it’s blocked up my parent’s bathroom sink on numerous occasions.

My memories of running in the early days are dominated by images of four or five of us cramming into my mum’s less than reliable car, carefully placing school books into the back window – where they would inevitably remain for the weekend – and heading to the brown fields of Claremorris, Cavan or Stranorlar.

Sometimes we’d have had accommodation booked in advance, more often than not we didn’t, but we’d always hope that wherever we ended up staying the night before a race would also happen to accommodate some young male runners from Cork or Donegal or Belfast, or such exotic lands.

And we’d laugh a lot. Those weekends were full of laughter.

And now…

And despite those wonderful memories, I’ve probably enjoyed cross country more in the past year or two than I ever have. And I plan to continue to do so for a few years yet.

On the good days I’m reminded how much I enjoy it. How fresh, wet mud doesn’t actually hurt, how much enjoyment can be gained from simply reaching the top of a hill, and how, even on the days when I’m the only one from my club or county, this is a team sport. We are all in this together.

And on the bad days I’m reminded how wet socks and hardened mud don’t make for a pleasant journey home.

At last season’s English National, I spent the final kilometre of a gruelling race, where the main challenge was simply staying upright, locked in battle with a fellow mud warrior. We ran together for a while, then I got dropped only to come back on the next muddy patch where I went past my rival, she rallied and dropped me, and then, in the final metres, I came past her one final time. No words were spoken when we crossed the line. We simply turned to each other, shook hands and laughed. We’d both scraped into the top 60!

Like any other form of art, not every race is going to be a masterpiece. You make a big deal of the good runs, mentally recreating them on an almost daily basis, and remind yourself that the bad results don’t matter. And on the bad days, as well as the good, you’re allowed to laugh.

Occasionally people ask me why I still do it. For me it’s simple. My Mona Lisa may have been created nearly fifteen years ago, but there are still goals to achieve. And I’d like to think that, like da Vinci, I have more than one great painting in me.

And I’ve never raced in Wicklow. I’d like to race in Wicklow!

Disclaimer: 

A small bit of artistic license has been used in writing this piece. My mum’s car only broke down on two occasions, there may have been a small bit of green in Cavan before we started, and though I’ve pulled quite a bit of grass and mud from the plughole, I’ve never actually blocked the sink.

And occasionally, just occasionally, you know you’ve ran well, not by how far over you’re bent or how long it takes to catch your breath, but by how easy it felt; because truly great artwork appears to be created effortlessly.


I first published this piece on http://egansaltitudeadventures.blogspot.ie/2015/12/the-art-of-cross-country.html in December 2015, but it's probably more relevant here than on a blog about altitude training.