CROSS PURPOSES
When the London Marathon was launched in 1981, and staged on the same day as the world cross country championships in Madrid, no self-respecting athletics writer or fan had to think twice about which event they would attend.
It was, as the Yanks say, a no-brainer, the world cross was the greatest long-distance race in the world. It brought everyone together, from the 1500 metres runners to the marathoners. And some of the hardest men and women in distance running history had won it. Alain Mimoun, the Algerian born Frenchman, won the ‘international’ (as it was then called) four times as a prelude to taking Olympic marathon gold in Melbourne 1956. Gaston Roelants of Belgium also won it four times, three of his victories coming after taking Olympic steeplechase gold in Tokyo 1964.
Some might argue that Grete Waitz’s five world cross wins were more meritorious than her nine New York Marathon titles. And before she picked up the pieces (of Olympic gold) in Los Angeles 1984, after Mary Decker and Zola Budd had the most famous collision in history outside the Titanic and the iceberg, Maricica Puica of Romania spoiled Waitz’s streak. Puica won again two years later. Budd too had two runaway victories. On the other hand, there were those who blew out completely, for example, the great Moroccan Saïd Aouita - Olympic gold and five track world records at one time - could do no better than 37th in the junior race in Glasgow 1979.
Over the years the terrain altered, not to everyone’s taste. The race which had begun back in 1903 as a British ‘home’ international, ie between England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland before expanding to western Europe and occasionally New Zealand and north Africa, was originally held over long laps, with ploughed fields, hedges, brooks, etc.
But by the 1960s, the International Cross Country, as it was now called, had mostly abandoned ‘real’ cross country in favour of shorter laps on hippodromes or parkland. The race was finally awarded ‘world championship’ status in 1973, and opened up far more. The first men’s world champion was a Finn, Pekka Paivarinta. Paola Pigni of Italy won the first of two women’s titles. It had become even more of an ‘event,’ the hardest to win. And there was the additional attraction of the team race.
There was extra anticipation for that 1981 championship in Madrid, since it was to be the first participation by the Ethiopians, led by previous year’s double Olympic champion, Miruts Yifter.
I was fortunate at the time that my brother lived in Madrid, so I went a few days early, and took the opportunity to go and interview Bronislaw Malinowski, who had won Olympic steeplechase gold in Moscow. The ebullient Pole would be killed in a car crash back in Poland a few weeks later, but had been training in Madrid for a couple of months prior to the world cross; and my interest in him, apart from him being a ‘character,’ was that he’d made it known that, having a Scottish mother, he was interested in switching nationality to Scotland, in time for the 1982 Commonwealth Games.
As it turned out, Malinowski ran poorly. But the race was packed with incident. It’s often ignored that Madrid is almost 700 metres, or just over 2000 feet above sea-level, a height at which altitude begins to be a factor. Maybe that’s why six Ethiopians turned into the finishing straight well ahead of the rest in the senior men’s race. But there was a problem, there was still one lap left to run! Someone on the Ethiopian team hadn’t done their sums. Yifter was furious, and stopped running briefly, before setting out with his colleagues on a final lap. But defending champion, Craig Virgin of the US powered past long-time leader Mohamed Kedir for a second consecutive victory.
But the Ethiopians did enough to win the team race, something they repeated the next four years. Until the Kenyans got into their stride, and more than emulated their neighbours, with 18 consecutive senior men’s team titles. Since then, the two East African nations have swapped victories. And have dominated the individual race as well.
Kenyans John Ngugi and Paul Tergat won five times each, only to be topped by Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia, who won six. Kenenisa also won five short course titles, until that innovation was quashed by the IAAF, and the event dropped. It was just one of several innovations that the IAAF has introduced in the last decade as a means of making the world cross more attractive, ie not a walkover for the East Africans.
None has worked, and in Amman last weekend, the Ethiopians and Kenyans shared the eight titles - individual and team races - between them. Because, after a slow start, their women and juniors have become just as dominating, the latter even more so. Because to a third-world youngster, with an arguable genetic advantage, the lure of a lucrative career in exchange for a hard training regimen is, well, as above, a no-brainer.
Meanwhile, multiple leisure pursuits, poor diet, fun-running and other examples of cosseting youngsters with easy options has resulted, in the UK at least, in the decline of school sport and the disappearance of the club system, both of which nurtured the likes of Dave Bedford, Ian Stewart, Brendan Foster, Nick Rose, Seb Coe, Steve Ovett, Steve Cram, Steve Jones, Tim Hutchings, and others too numerous to mention. The same has happened in other traditionally strong cross nations, Spain, Italy, Belgium, France, New Zealand. Even the once-challenging Moroccans have dropped away. Only the USA is maintaining a semblance of rivalry, principally due to college coaches returning to a distance training base, and with the sponsored altitude camps for seniors.
Because it’s not simply that the East Africans are turning out scores of runners that can beat the rest, it’s that the rest just ain’t training hard enough. Otherwise, why would the majority of the top ten UK 10,000 metres men date back to the 1970s and 1980s? If Bedford and Foster were running 27min 30sec 35 years ago, there is no good reason, apart from volition why Brits shouldn’t be running sub-27mins by now. If Paula Radcliffe can do it on the distaff side, so can others.
A glance at the history books reminds us that England won 42 titles out of 59 prior to the inauguration of the world championships. OK, it was against a handful or two of nations, but you’ll get the point. Things change. And I can’t argue with taking the world cross to Jordan, it is part of the IAAF’s remit to take events across the world, but the low entry overall, one of the worst in history means the world is not responding. Things were made worse by the absence of major ‘names’ like Kenenisa and Tirunesh. But they are hardly ‘personalities’.
On that score, as I’ve been telling agents for the last 20 years, get your athletes to learn English, and give them media training. If Haile Geb can do it, so can others. Finally, when former winner Zersenay Tadesse of Eritrea finishes third, as he did in Amman, the reports consider that this is good preparation for the London Marathon later this month. So much for the greatest long distance race in the world! The only thing that can revive the corpse is for the rest of the world to recognise, like the Americans have done, that there are no easy options or short cuts. It’s long, hard training. That’s all!
April 1st, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Great stuff, Pat - as usual. A couple of footnotes:
1. I watched that ‘inaugural’ world champ at Waregem, Belgium, in 73. A ‘real’ x-country course, with ditches and ankle-deep mud. It should have been the year little Mariano of Haro of Spain finally broke his duck (?5-6 medal placings). Two thirds thru, he was leading Paivarinta and pulling away - only for fate to intervene in the form of a group of loony Irish nationalists (surely a pleonasm…), who grabbed poor H. and hurled him into a ditch. H. still managed to lead P into the finishing straight, only to be outsprinted in the final 200m.
2. Ian Stewart’s unique achievement: winning euro indoor 3km and world c-c on successive weekends.
To be fair to the non-Africans, the Amman course looked particularly tough. Obviously hot. Possibly an altitude element too…
April 1st, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Nice blog Pat.
As you and I have discussed many times the way forward for Western athletes is to revert back to high volume base conditioning as the foundation for performance. The US as you stated have done this to good effect and standards have risen dramatically over the last eight years.
A good basic training formula would be a maximum of two workouts per week, each with around 10K in volume at a controlled intensity with short recovery. Every third workout a tempo run of eight to twelve miles at threshold pace using a heart rate monitor. A long run of 18 to 22 miles and total volume of over 100 mile per week. This type of conditioning followed consistently for eight or nine months per year would produce better Western performances at the world cross and in track distance races.
The World Cross Country Championships may no longer be the greatest race in the world but it is still certainly one of the worlds great races. Maybe its that without a strong Western challenge we don’t appreciate it as much! JIm Harvey
April 1st, 2009 at 4:17 pm
As usual, Pat hits the nail right on the head. And, to me, it’s actually sad that the World Cross Country Champs doesn’t hold the global stature that it once did. It’s a race - actually, an event - unlike any other, and it deserves better. The one item I would question is whether the US really does recognize the merit of this race and, by extension, what it takes to excel in it. Just witness the overwhelming absence from the US senior teams of that nation’s biggest names. I believe the emphasis in the US is changing for the better, as you say Pat, but if Americans still eschew something like the World CC in order to stay at home and compete in domestic track “invitationals” or somesuch, then the indication is that they are still too inward-looking. Of course, I could be wrong
JOB.
April 1st, 2009 at 5:13 pm
The team race is not a true team test with only 4 to score. It should be 6 as previously
April 1st, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Dear Pat,
I loved your blog on World Cross. To me, it is the real world championships. I do think that American distance running is getting better, and that is due to the two decades of questioning by athletes, coaches, fans and media, but also to the hard work of the coaches and athletes.
I am fascinated watching the likes of Stewart, Bedford and Coe getting into the trenches in the UK to help improve British distance running. As our former AR in the marathon Buddy Edelen noted in his diary, he became a distance runner once he moved to the UK.
The World XC champs should be a must on all distance runners schedules. It should be a more difficult course, hills, trenches, etc, and the training for such a course goes a long way in preparing a distance runner for a spring marathon or good 10k debut.
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:59 am
Hi Pat
It is realy an historic blog. Hope that all of us and others could undertand what it means that a man who loves athletics like you went to right such blog.
Congratulations
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:05 am
Hallo Pat,
I have with interest and enjoyment read your blog. I think you have touched upon vital questions concerning the future of distance-running in Europe.
As to the WC in cross I believe many, including myself, have lost the interest. 20 - 25 years ago, you knew the names of the competitors who
were in the top and it was certainly the best performers from 1500 to marathon on the starting-line.
You mentioned truly that the Africans, although fantastic runners, have, with few exceptions, no personalities. Perhaps because for a normal Brit or a Finn, the African names are as difficult as British and Finnish names are to Africans. The normal sports interested public, I am not talking about track nuts as the American say, have no idea about the winners of this year s championships. Before it was familiar names, who were on the stage many years.
The webpage of the Swedish Federation put a rethorical question in the headline. Did Europe leave WO in Amman??
Of its 50 membership nations only FIVE fielded teams in Amman. Just Great Britain had teams in all four classes, Spain had three, Portugal two and France and Russia one each.
Of the male medalists in the European champs NOBODY started and of two women starting, one did not finish.
Of the 12 medals at stake, Europe took one, the Portuguese ladies bronze-medal in the team-competition.
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Hi Pat
Greetings from Ireland.
Spot on analysis.
As always, distance running success is mostly about hours and hours of hard work. It’s also about having competitive clusters at a high standard like the Brits seem to have now with their younger distance women.
What’s happening in the US is encouraging too. If Goucher and Flanagan can get track medals at major champs, surely others can be competitive too?
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Great article.
One point, though, and that is that Tadesse may have indeed been simply “warming up” for London. Judging by the race pictures he was wearing race flats, and not spikes, as his competitors were.
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Pat, I think you’ve covered all the reasons for the decline in distance running performance by first-world runners. Of course, it a no brainer that if you are a young, destitute African - as many are - you will train and work your guts out to succeed as a runner. It’s a lifeline and the only game in town, unlike the developed world.
Glad you didn’t go down the road that just because the Africans are born and live at altitude that they have an inherited advantage that our runners can never ever hope to overcome. Not so. It’s all about hard work along with life-style, commitment etc. Train at altitude if you want, but the only good reason to train at altitude is if you are going to race at altitude. And let’s face it , very few important races are held there. Mick
April 4th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Pat, as a younger athlete who loves the World XC as well as the history of the sport, I would like to add a couple of more upbeat notes. I watched a World XC in person for the first time in Edinburgh last year and it still rates as a spectacle above any other race in the world to my mind. A ‘mob match’ (to use an analogy from the club running scene which produced so many of yesteryear’s great runners) between the top 20 or 30 at World XC and that of any of the world’s major marathons could be staged over almost any distance or terrain and see the World XC still prove it’s place as the greatest distance race there is.
Furthermore, as the one remaining big selling point of the World XC is its (legitimate) claim to be the toughest race in the world, diluting the depth by reducing the teams from 9 to 6 is a backward step. As seen by the paltry European efforts this year, it has none of the intend effect of allowing the Europeans to compete and takes away from the best bit of World XC.
April 12th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Before I read this I said the same sort of thing in a letter to Athletics Weekly. My point was that it’s not just that the Africans are dominant, Europe’s men are nothing like as good as they were in the 1980s. If there were more Europeans running in the 27s for 10,000m (as there were then), things would be different. That said, I actually did find all four races in Amman very exciting.
April 14th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
The rider to all this is that the IAAF has become bored/frustrated with the world cross, and is moving to drop it as an annual event. Lack of TV coverage in Europe - with execs tired of east African monopolies - has made the event a harder sell to sponsors, too.
As I reported for AroundtheRings at the weekend, there are no obvious candidates bidding to stage the event in 2011 and beyond, and the IAAF sees no reason to continue staging a world champs for one group of athletes, and not, say an annual sprints or throws event.
The world’s race walkers had best watch out, too…
June 8th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Hi Pat,
Greetings from South Africa. Thanks for your great comments on the World Cross Country! What a pity that the IAAF want to change this from an annual event due to the lack of interest from European countries. Cross Country is the base of all world class distance runners so why take this opportunity away?