World Cross is doomed, says former silver medallist Hutchings

By Steven Downes

ONE of Great Britain's all-time cross-country greats fears that the World Cross Country Championships, the latest edition of which are to be staged in Poland on Sunday, are doomed.

POOR SHOWING: Great Britain hopeful Steph Twell under-performed at the World Cross Country Championships last year - an event dominated by African-born runners (Getty Images)

The World Cross is the oldest annual international athletics championship, with a history that dates back more than a century to 1903. But after next year's event is staged in Spain, its future is uncertain, as it will then be staged only every other year, although few countries are bidding to stage the event.

African domination of the World Cross and a waning of interest in Europe, among spectators, TV companies, federations and sponsors, are blamed for the event's decline.

"Let's face it," said Tim Hutchings, a World Cross silver medal-winner in 1984. "Non-African distance running is dying on its feet. It has been for more than ten years."

Sunday's event, in Bydgoszcz, will not be televised by the BBC, even on the digital "red button", due to a contractual dispute with the TV marketing agency selling broadcast rights for the world governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

But even Eurosport, the pan-European sports channel for whom Hutchings is a respected commentator, is not covering this year's World Cross, opting instead to show Nordic skiing biathlon and some recorded touring car races.

"I really do fear for the future of the event," said Hutchings. "No one wants to host it and it's already due to be held in alternate years soon.

"I don't think it'll be long before it's every four years, or perhaps scrapped all together."

 When Hutchings, running for England, won his silver medal at New Jersey's Meadowlands race track, he was beaten by Portugal's Carlos Lopes, with Wales's Steve Jones third.

Later in 1984, Hutchings placed fourth in the Olympic 5,000m, while Lopes, at 36, won the Olympic Marathon gold. A year later, Jones broke the marathon world record.

"The sheer diversity of the field, from a range of countries, pitting milers against marathon runners, was always one of the great attractions of the World Cross," Hutchings said.

On Sunday, there will be just four runners in Britain's senior men's team (from a maximum of eight entries, with six to run), just one from Belgium, while Ireland, another with a strong cross-country tradition, has none at all.

Last year, when the World Cross was staged in Amman, Jordan, the first 25 places in the senior men's race were taken up by African-born runners, including Kenyan-born athletes wearing the vest of Qatar, the Gulf state that had lured elite runners to immigrate with lucrative offers.

The top-placed European runner in the 2009 senior races was Kenyan-born Hilda Kibet, running for the Netherlands.

Some athletics experts believe that the IAAF carries much responsibility for the decline of the World Cross. Changing formats for the event and reductions in team sizes have been tried, to little effect.

But above all, critics blame the IAAF for failing to enforce stricter rules on transfers of nationality, and suggest that the IAAF has abandoned the event's heritage: although the world governing body has managed the World Cross since 1973, its archive on its own website only goes back to 1997.

Cross-country purists also point to the flat, track-like courses accepted by the IAAF as venues for the event - Hutchings called last year's course in Amman "a sandpit" - suggesting that the lack of more traditional courses, featuring grueling hills and mud, have helped turn the World Cross into a virtual benefit event for the Kenyans and Ethiopians.

"The world at large - not athletics fans of course - is bored stiff with seeing this ‘fast running' with none of their own guys anywhere in sight," said Hutchings.

"When you look at the history of the event, this demise of the championships is a crying shame."