Bathurst or bust? Will this weekend’s Aussie event prove a backward or forward step for the world cross-country championships?

This year marks 50 years since the first world cross-country championships took place in Waregem in Belgium and 120 years since the event’s predecessor, the ‘International’ cross-country championships, was staged on Hamilton Racecourse in Scotland. Often dubbed ‘the toughest footrace on the planet’, it has a long and varied history.

Athletics is a sport that rebels against change and therefore it is little surprise that the 1973 event in Waregem was described in AW by its correspondent, Cliff Temple, as “the first of the IAAF-organised International Cross-Country Championships”. The title of an event that had survived from 1903-1973 was not going to die easily.

AW’s headline read: “An end to English domination” – and Temple reported that “there was no lack of incident or excitement” at the event with, among other things, Irish demonstrators impeding the athletes.

England had won the men’s team gold for nine successive years but in this first official ‘world cross-country championships’ they could finish only fifth.

Individual titles went to Pekka Paivarinta, a 23-year-old caretaker from Turku who raced to gold wearing a distinctive red and white cycling hat, and Paola Cacchi, the 27-year-old daughter of an Italian opera tenor and a Spanish mother.

Paivarinta beat Mariano Haro of Spain and Rod Dixon of New Zealand – both of whom were affected by the demonstrators. There were no Kenyans or Ethiopians at all, although such was its importance the Irish hope Neil Cusack flew into Belgium from the United States to compete.

There was no junior women’s race in ’73 either, but Jim Brown of Scotland took the junior men’s title. Spectators paid £1 to enter and another £1 for a seat in the grandstand. “They must have felt they had their money’s worth of entertainment,” wrote Temple.

It is something of a myth that the world cross-country championships once enjoyed massive fields with athletes from every corner of the globe. Those inaugural championships featured athletes from just 21 countries with the number rising over the subsequent decades to 33 in 1983, 54 in 1993 and 65 in 2003.

The 2019 championships in Aarhus, Denmark, saw athletes from 67 of World Athletics’ 214 member nations turn out. The 2023 championships, which takes place in Bathurst, Australia, this Saturday (Feb 18) is set to feature 48 nations.

The Aarhus event four years ago brought a level of energy and imagination to cross-country running that had not been seen before. As I reported at the time: “Aarhus lived up to the hype to deliver a devilish course and memorable races in sizzling sunshine.”

The course featured a number of obstacles, most notably there was a steep climb and descent on the grassy roof of an eco-friendly museum. Mass races for club runners helped to draw in the crowds. Seb Coe described it as a “watershed moment”.

Then the pandemic struck and the plan to stage the event in Bathurst in 2021 was postponed to this year. The Australian organisers appear to have taken the baton from Aarhus with gusto and have expanded some of the ideas such as holding a world masters championship event, plus schools races and an intriguing “race before the race” which has given athletes a last-minute qualification opportunity to run in the main event on Saturday.

There is no doubt Australia deserve to stage these championships too. Wherever the event has been held in recent decades, the Aussies have been one of the most loyal and committed supporters of the event. In the last 50 years it has only been held in Oceania once, too, in Auckland, New Zealand, back in 1988.

The big question, though, is whether it is wise to hold the championships so far away from its heartland in western Europe. Bathurst’s biggest problem is effectively its geography.

The original beauty of the world cross-country championships was that it pitted the world’s top milers versus marathoners in an ultimate test of endurance. Yet Olympic 1500m and world 5000m champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen has insisted all winter that he has no intention of interrupting his preparations for this summer with a long journey – and the associated jetlag – to Australia.

He is not alone and those who are criticising UK Athletics for sending just one competitor in the senior men’s race should realise that many of the top British athletes like Emile Cairess, Marc Scott and Mo Farah have no interest in doing it. As someone mentioned to me last month, the British trials in January may as well have been staged in Perth, Australia, instead of Perth in Scotland given the small number of elite athletes who raced there.

Notably, only five European countries are sending athletes to compete in the senior races in Bathurst. Along with Britain there is Spain, Denmark, Latvia and Estonia – and that’s all. Countries like France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Ireland, Turkey, Scandinavian nations and many others have simply not bothered.

Still, the championships in Bathurst will have mouthwatering line-ups in all the races. World record-holders Letesenbet Gidey of Ethiopia and Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda will be among the favourites. Cheptegei’s team-mate, Jacob Kiplimo, plus Kenyans such as Geoffrey Kamworor add to the quality. The host nation is naturally turning out a strong team, too, with Olli Hoare, Stewy McSweyn, Abbey Caldwell and Jess Hull part of a 4x2km mixed relay team with medal-winning ambition.

READ MORE: Olli Hoare looks forward to Bathurst test

For the Brits in Bathurst, the team is affected by the aforementioned athlete apathy. Or, to be more accurate, a preference to perform on the indoor circuit, or roads, or outdoor track this spring and summer. Traditionally Britain has supported the world cross far more than lots of European nations too.

Yet the appetite to send a full GB team to the world cross has been waning for many years. Over the last 20 years the European Cross-Country Championships has become a far bigger focal point for Brits – and indeed cross-country runners across the continent in general. Athletes, coaches and selectors are also forever faced with the dilemma of whether finishing down in the 70s or 80s, or worse, will act as an inspiration to improve or whether it will deliver the painful realisation that the leading east Africans are on another level.

In the past I’ve described the UKA selection policy for the world cross as “short-sighted, defeatist and will sap the spirit of any ambitious runners who felt they had a sniff of representing their country on the world stage”.

Of course there is also the argument that even if they are not ‘competitive’, what’s wrong with simply earning a national vest and being part of a world championship? Most athletes would love the honour and cherish the memory to their grave.

Australia is a long way to travel to get suffer a bruising defeat, though. But it is interesting – and perhaps a sign of the times – that the GB squad that went to the World Mountain and Trail Championships in Chiang Mai, Thailand, earlier this winter was almost twice as big as the Bathurst-bound squad. Saying that, the Chiang Mai event was effectively two global championships rolled into one.

Maybe now that Jack Buckner is chief executive at UKA the selection strategy will change. The 1986 European 5000m champion will know that Rob de Castella travelled from Australia to Gateshead to finish sixth in the 1983 world cross before winning the inaugural world marathon title later that year.

Or that Said Aouita, the Moroccan who beat Buckner to world 5000m gold in 1987, first appeared on the AW cover as an enthusiastic junior leading the under-20 men’s race at the world cross in 1978 (he faded to 34th).

Or that Paula Radcliffe, Mo Farah and countless others cut their teeth at the world cross before going on to dominate the roads and track. Even 800m star Keely Hodgkinson was grinding it out on the cross-country circuit – and making the English Schools podium – as recently as four years ago.

Individual governing bodies aside, World Athletics has not been blameless either when it comes to dwindling fortunes of the world cross. During Lamine Diack’s reign as president they took the event to far-flung places like Guiyang in China and Amman in Jordan. In 2010 and 2013 it was held in Bydgoszcz twice in the space of three years largely because the IAAF could not find anyone else interested in hosting it.

Most embarrassing of all there was a cross-country brain-storming get-together in Belgrade in 2013 where delegates were invited from Caribbean nations with little cross-country heritage and, many months later, a 184-page document was belatedly released full of graphs, photos and quotes from Winnie the Pooh and with a short-list of solutions buried on page 122 that could have been written in five minutes flat by anyone who has ever worn 15mm spikes.

READ MORE: Why Ethiopia prioritises cross-country running

The best move World Athletics ever made for cross-country was when they awarded the 2019 event to Aarhus. There, a team led by Jacob Larsen breathed fresh life into the concept and gave cross-country enthusiasts hope that the event was on the mend.

Aarhus reminded us that some of the best endurance running comes on the country not concrete; on mud as opposed to Mondo.

Will Bathurst take the championships forward or backwards? Let’s see.