Who is killing World XC?

Where were Russia today in the Senior Mens?

XC Fan wrote:

World XC used to rival Soccer's World Cup for international participation.

No it didn't.

I think it's African dominance. The rest of the world doesn't want to run races it can't win.

No one is killing it, the sad reality is that no one else seems to think its worth matching up with the best African runners esp when there is no money involved. They have chosen to take the wimpy way out. I frankly dont understand it, because no matter where they hide, they still have to face them in the big meets. Saving themselves for another day?? Mentally they have lost already.

Sad but hey, I'll watch Bek turn it on in XC if he ran by himself!

What I would like to see is holding world cross in the summer in the non-Olympic, non-world championsip year in the four year cycle. 2008 Olympics, 2009 World Track Champs, 2010 World Cross, 2011 World Track Champs, 2012 Olympics. This may allow more athletes to focus on competing in and running well at the World XC Champs, at least every 4 years. The other 3 years in the cycle could keep World XC in the Winter.

I doubt that will help. Whether we like it or not European and other countries will not participate in this race if they don't have a chance of winning some medals.Not sending athletes is an indication that the chances are getting smaller by the minute.It doesn't help that East African countries like Uganda and Eritrea are rising and the Quatar and Bahrain teams are almost all kenyan.If it is meaningless to have Kenya, Ethiopia Uganda and Eritrea duke it out every year... they should just get rid of it.

TMoney wrote:

What I would like to see is holding world cross in the summer in the non-Olympic, non-world championsip year in the four year cycle. 2008 Olympics, 2009 World Track Champs, 2010 World Cross, 2011 World Track Champs, 2012 Olympics. This may allow more athletes to focus on competing in and running well at the World XC Champs, at least every 4 years. The other 3 years in the cycle could keep World XC in the Winter.

The summer track season, even without a World Champs or Olympic Games, would still conflict -- perhaps even moreso.

Ethio Boy wrote:

I doubt that will help. Whether we like it or not European and other countries will not participate in this race if they don't have a chance of winning some medals.

Not sending athletes is an indication that the chances are getting smaller by the minute.

It doesn't help that East African countries like Uganda and Eritrea are rising and the Quatar and Bahrain teams are almost all kenyan.

If it is meaningless to have Kenya, Ethiopia Uganda and Eritrea duke it out every year... they should just get rid of it.

Would it be considered meaningless if it was Great Britain, USA, Russia and Germany duking it out every year?

Running World Cross makes for a better athlete....invaluable experience....even if you are in 59th place. Will make you better in track & marathon.

Just as NCAA DIV I cross makes for a better collegian...for the same reason.

Saturday, March 29, 2008 12:25:00 PM

European cross country sees sharp decline

By Mitch Phillips / Reuters

EDINBURGH -- Senior athletics officials will hold a crisis meeting after this weekend's world cross-country championships to address the decline of cross-country running throughout Europe.

When the event was first held in 1973, 85 percent of the competitors were European, but in Sunday's races that figure will be down to 29 percent.

Major athletics nations such as Germany and France, as well as most of Eastern Europe, are barely represented in Scotland while even host nation Britain has been forced to field a virtual youth squad as senior athletes opt to skip the event.

Lamine Diack, president of the International Association of Athletics Federations said countries had lost sight of the team aspect of cross country, the only major IAAF discipline where team medals are awarded.

Many competing nations have sent squads with fewer than the nine athletes necessary to take part in the team competition.

Diack identified Germany, for whom Susanne Hahn is a sole representative, for particular criticism. "They could not have made more effort? For a country of 90 million not to field a team -- shameful," he told a news conference on Saturday ahead of Sunday's world championships.

IAAF general secretary Pierre Weiss said the organization's cross-country committee would meet to see what could be done to revive cross country in Europe.

"Yes, we are facing a problem and we meet on Monday to discuss the future," he said.

Sebastian Coe, IAAF vice president, said the blame lay not with national federations but with individual athletes and coaches who did not appreciate the benefits of cross country.

"If you a looking at the problem of cross country in Europe then look at the European standard of distance running," he said. "We lost the argument 20 years ago -- the coaches don't see it."

Coe, a two-time Olympic 1,500-meter champion in the 1980s, said that in his era winter cross-country running was an essential element of the training regime for European athletes.

"If you go through the annals of distance running, you will see that most of the great names incorporated cross country, but you rarely find anyone at a European level now who sees a correlation from cross country to track," he said.

It is a different story in Africa, whose athletes have become astonishingly dominant.

The senior men's team race has been won by Ethiopia or Kenya every year since 1981 in both the short and long races, and the same two nations have shared the junior men's race since 1982.

On the women's side, only Portugal, in 1994, has interrupted the African dominance in the last 17 years.

Diack said the Africans took cross country far more seriously than European countries and said the track performances of their leading athletes supported Coe's beliefs.

Ethiopia's Kenenisa Bekele, a favorite to win the senior men's title for a record sixth time, is also a three-time world champion over 10,000 meters on the track, while Ethiopian women's favorite and twice winner Tirunesh Dibaba took the world 10,000-meter track title in Osaka last year.

"Athletes have to recognize that a serious part of development is cross country and running in a cross world championship can be enormously helpful for a track season," said Coe.

-ENDS-

XC Fan wrote:

Many of the worlds best competed today in Edinburgh, but overall the fields were diluted.

"Diluted" doesn't seem to be the right word. The absence of German and French runners hardly "dilutes" a world-class running event.

The world cross-country championships is among the most meritocratic of sports events. Personally, I like it that way. I prefer to see the best in the world going at each other, instead of some sort of United Nations parade like the current Bolder Boulder.

On a somewhat related note, the National Basketball Association was once considered to be doomed to obscurity, because black players were becoming increasingly dominant and white spectators wouldn't watch a sport dominated by blacks. The NBA later became a spectacular success, and its greatest players became household names. The NBA didn't have to resort to some sort of diversity program to broaden its appeal; it simply put on a great show with the best players in the sport.

I don't expect the world cross-country championships to ever be a big spectator event outside of a few countries. But I think that the event should concentrate on promoting the best athletes, not broadening participation. Lesser athletes should recognize the honor of being able to race against guys like Bekele. That's what happened when the U.S. started sending its best basketball players to the Olympics. Players from other countries were honored just to be able to play against the best from the U.S., even though they knew that they were going to get thrashed. Over time, to the surprise of many, the players from other countries became competitive with the Americans, and even started to beat them.

I'd be interested to know how many/which individual Euro elite long dist runners/coaches Coe has talked to to form his opinion. Disappointing he says the argument was lost 20 years ago as 2 of the best recent(ish) Euro male perfs in WXC have come from UK guys Keska and Brown. Several of the best Euro distance guys still do XC, they just don't do the Worlds.

The debate seem to overlook the notion that - hypothetical of course - the best ever 10k run by a Euro native male not using PEDs would prob not be equiv of the Top 10 in WXC in any of the last 5 years.

Bigger picture, as IAAF has, to its credit, done so much to develop T+F/XC/Road across all continents, what % of Euro participants woudl it accept as a 'right' balance?

It wasnt only the French and German missing. Only Spain, Great Britain, Portugal and Italy turned up. Where were the scandanavian countries, Russians, Poland, Netherlands etc

MIo wrote:

It wasnt only the French and German missing.

Yes, I realize that. And all of those other countries denied us the opportunity to see who would finish in 180th place.

The solution is simple. The promoters should take all money

out of track and field and we will see the africans going

back to bushes. After all their wages are paid by European

TV networks and sponsors. As long as there is money for

the Africans they will dominate. Back to amateur athletics(as it is nowadays for the Europeans) is the only chance.

Mostly that is all you see anyway. Diababa running a solo WR attempt. This because the agents are running the the IAAF. Rather than limit the number of Africans in a field we will allow them to switch allegiance and run for every country. Only the IAAf can stop this by making a rule that you can only represent the country of your Birth. This would limit the number of mercenary africans that dominate every world final. Europeans had a chance at one time, but now most of Belgium is Morrocan, France is Algerian, Holland, Denmark and the US are Kenyan. Then bring in Quatar, Uganda, and Emerits. The agents love it because their african athletes are overwhelming. A white guy cant even get a slot.

There is a difference between the two though. Once NBA teams became primarily composed of black players, there was still a team competing in all of the same cities, wearing that city's name on their jerseys, and fans adjusted to the change. (I'd also like to think most people don't care what color people they're cheering for.) The change in cross country participation isn't just racial, it's geographical. If the team from a certain city starts finishing last in the division every year, it's fans will lose interest. Similarly, I imagine the lack of success, and now even the lack of participation from many European countries, must contribute to a lack of interest in the sport in general. It's simply not as fun to watch when the guys you're cheering for are being lost in the middle of a pack 3-5 minutes behind the guys fighting for the win. Now I agree with you that it will probably never be a mainstream spectator sport. I also agree that the race should have the best of the best. But I don't think it will become popular by doing that if the best of the best are all from the same 3 small countries in Africa. People from other areas just simply aren't going to be as interested in it if they don't see their colors being represented. Heck, half the threads on this forum about this race aren't about the race, but what certain Americans would've been able to do in the race. Even amongst the sports most faithful, just seeing the best guys compete isn't enough, we want to see OUR GUYS compete.

It's not a WORLD cross-country meet; it's Ethiopia vs Kenya, as anyone can see. The Olympics only allow 3 racers per event; the World XC allows up to 9. And then, harsh reality sets in. You can see how truly deep the east African talent is. It's hard to blame Europeans for not wanting to run. Who really needs to have their butt handed to them year after year?

The IAAF is holding a "crisis" meeting to discuss declining European participation. But what is IAAF going to do? Follow the Olympics model and totally revise the team scoring so each country can only enter 3 athletes?

aserbimserbero wrote:

There is a difference between the two though. Once NBA teams became primarily composed of black players, there was still a team competing in all of the same cities, wearing that city's name on their jerseys, and fans adjusted to the change. (I'd also like to think most people don't care what color people they're cheering for.)

It is certainly a tougher sell in cross-country, but I do believe that the NBA's success over the last quarter-century is notable (and perhaps instructive) largely because it overcame very significant cross-racial marketing challenges that many thought would forever marginalize the NBA in the U.S. (I remember Bill Russell's remark, many years ago, that NBA teams played three black guys at home games, four black guys at away games, and five black guys when they got behind.)

I do agree that issues of geographic and national identity and dominance add further challenges to promoting the world cross-country championships. But the Olympic Games have long managed to attract participation from countries with no world-class athletes and no medal prospects, because it has long been a great honor simply to participate in the Games. Perhaps the IAAF should, more overtly, promote the world cross-country championships as the single greatest distance running competition in the world -- greater than any Olympic race, bringing together the world's very best runners at a wide range of distances for a single, no-holds-barred, all-out foot race. That's what it was before the long-short-course experiment, and that's how it should be promoted now.