World XC will be epic - Finally learning from Cyclocross

It was a good effort, but they're never going to make it popular while the races are dominated by people nobody is really interested in.

Sad, but true.

The junior races are a joke anyway. Tim Hutchings was desperately trying to convince people that they were watching something special, it was almost as if he knew that the World Cross was heading toward last chance saloon and that he needed to be as hyped about it as possible.

Maybe that's why Crammy wasn't on the mic, he's a lot more cynical about the various types of cheating certain nations continue to ruin the sport with.

Lack of international competition is disappointing - Europe barely showing up and US performance really is an embarrassment. It's like they don't bother to try because of the competition.

I agree, until there's more of a mix, general interest will be low. I went back to following La Liga this year after many years, despite some hiccups, we all know where things are heading, Barcelona, Real and Atletico, etc. Too predictable, I lost interest.

I gotta say though, beyond performance, the LRC storyline on the couple of people they sent was great.

It was a brave attempt at making the XC Champs more entertaining but the problem is with the runners, not the venue.

European spectators want to see European winners, or at the least them being in contention for the win.

But the World Champs was just a big parade of East Africans, followed by more East Africans (and some Moroccans).

There was nobody to root for- no recognisable faces or compelling personalities.

It was just incredibly boring - some guy from Uganda beat some guy from Kenya. Yay!

Fine if you're a die-hard running fan but it's obvious why the sport has lost mass appeal.

What we need is some decent marketing around the top East African competitors. I'm sure they have personalities and stories to tell, yet they don't make it into the media, so it's hard to identify with anyone. Maybe next time the IAAF can do a little film piece on each of the favourites?

glad to see that sebastian coe is supporting cross country.

his plan is to wipe out 5 and 10k, and everyone can run cross and the marathon.

of course cross country is not part of diamond league, nor olympics.

way to support the sport mr. coe.

sure cross country is kind of boring, its for die hards.

realize golf, nascar, baseball, cricket are boring if you're not hardcore.

the 5k is epic.

right now though, there are a lot of no name africans totally dominating, and you want like europeans, latins, asians in the mix to make it interesting.

back in the day you had everyone in there, irish, nz, english, germans africans, samerica.

but the solution is not to wipe out races.

the solution is to encourage grass roots, and have them have a place to compete at the top levels.

no doubt.

realize too, that the most popular sport, foootball, the most common scores like ninty percent are 1 to 0, 1 to 1, and 2 to 1.

and basket ball is way way behind and you score like 100 points, which is bizarre. why not score 1000 points per game.

anyway, trying to make track like a basket ball game for people that have the attention span of goldfish,

well, call me weird, i say that's a bad idea.-

The beer tent (at least from the coverage I saw on youtube) looked sparsely attended and didn’t deliver the desired effect. And where were the vikings? I rewatched an entire lap just to scan the crowd for them, but couldn’t find even one. None of this detracts from an excellent Championships though.