wtf Tallahassee will be permanent World XC home apparently?

You're absolutely correct! Don't ever come here! And tell all your commie friends that they shouldn't come here.

Leave us backward Americans to enjoy our primitive anarchy in peace.

What I dont understand is why we pick our team based on a course for high school and college competitions. Clearly World Cross is virtually a different sport with the obstacles etc. Might as well pick your Steeplechase team from a 3000m race or your 400 hurdles from a flat 400.

1964, 1972, and 1980 were pretty dynamite just off the top of my head as well.

This would be one of the most idiotic decisions ever for the sport. Any major US city has a better XC course. Franklin Park in Boston, Van Cortland in NYC, Belmont Plateau in Philly, Balboa Park in San Diego. All would be better options. Major European cities have better courses. Put it in Edinburgh for crying out loud. That would be awesome.

Have any of the cities you mentioned put in a bid to host? Because that's a prerequisite for hosting.

I am with you. Unless you find like a truly epic course where you run from castle to castle in the English countryside that turns this into some epic cross of Lollapallooza/UTMB and the London Marathon on grass, I think having a rotation of 4 semi-permanent sites plus one new one might be the way to go. SO it’s in Tallahassee once a decade.

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2026/01/the-2026-world-xc-champs-were-a-smashing-success-how-do-we-turn-into-our-kentucky-derby/

The key to the finances might be getting the mass participation numbers up. Now you could go to a permanent host if it became the most epic xc race on the earth for competitors - like London Marathon on grass. A source at WA thinks tens of thousands won’t pay to run a 2km loop course - plus look courses make it hard to run too many people anyways as you have to let them finish before starting the next wave.

They thought you need to find a point to point course (which isn’t good for spectators) or find a sort of a “flower” course. Where they are like 4 or 5 oval loos coming from a central location so the fans could stay in the middle but the runners run point to point.

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With the push for XC to be included the Winter Olympics shouldn’t the World events attempt continuity both in course type and location to build an audience and following? One of the reasons XC skiing and biathlon have large followings is they return to iconic courses each season. If XC running gets into Olympics the course will likely be at altitude with snow. They could repurpose XC skiing courses for running events. I didn’t mind Tallahassee course but I doubt the same features will be possible on a Winter Olympics course.

Tallahassee did a fine job but there are a lot of strikes against it. The novelty stuff of a ramp, a swamp boat, some mud, some sand, and a mockup of the most corrupt legislature in the country aren't good enough. First, you can't hold World xc regularly in a country that won't even let many of the top competitors into the country for the event. Second, Tallahassee is a small, isolated place with very limited airport, trains, and public transportation and mostly wretched, cockroach and drug-infested hotels. (I say this from experience as a Floridian). Third, weather is haphazard in January, from perfect to 80s and humid. Fourth, the course and scenery are merely adequate, nothing spectacular or particularly challenging.

You put a world xc event in a spectacular place near masses of people and you might get many tens of thousands of people there, especially if they have a strong team. Edinburgh, London, San Francisco, Central Park are a few of the places that might draw far more interest and media.

I watched the coverage when I got back home. They need many changes if Tallahassee becomes the permanent site.

Lots of ground level cameras, especially early on the course. It was ridiculous they didn't have anything just beyond the ramp and another 1 or 2 prior to the sand. I can see how the audience got frustrated early, before the drone operators figured things out. After the start it was nothing but blimp level shots that didn't decipher the runners at all. Hannah England did a terrific job at that stage.

Also the camera at the mud was much too far away and didn't catch anything. That mud area was overly cramped. Not much room for spectators. I guess they put it there because they were most concerned about skirters. Next time it can be relocated to a wider wetter more high profile location.

Sand and logs were good. Ramp was okay. Water was weakest by far. Spectators initially flocked to that area then steadily departed because there wasn't much to see. Water should be 2x longer, at least a meter wider and several inches deeper.

Tallahassee itself is just the right size to host this type of event, IMO. I arrived Thursday night and made a list of things to do on Friday and Sunday. There was no trouble coming up with 6 or 8. Granted, I don't mind driving to get there. Pensacola air museum was also an option but that's a long day given 3 hours away.

I don't think you should limit it to Tallahassee. Chambers Bay in Seattle or a couple different courses (not necessarily Glendoveer in Portland, but Glendoveer would be fine), Mount Sac in LA, the Crystal Springs Cross Country Course or something in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Schenley Park in Pittsburgh, the Stillwater course would all be good hosts for the US. If you think Eugene is hard to get to from the east coast, Tallahassee is basically the Eugene of the East Coast for those living West of the Mississippi.

It's kind of funny how you hate Eugene so much because it's hard to get to for you, but love Tallahassee because it's easy to get to for you, yet they have the exact same flaws.

USC still has time to include XC for 2028. But it will have to be held the week before T&F/Mara starts so kids can triple.

There really is no world-wide cross country running circuit of repeatedly held competitions to build an audience and following. You have a few events in Europe, but none in the US, Asia, Africa, etc.

Yes there are many cross country running races in the USA at the high school and collegiate level, but these are not open competitions that anyone can enter.

There is nothing for cross country running like the Diamond League or World Cup events in skiing and other winter sports.

That lack of world-wide interest and elite level open competitions in cross country running will hurt its chances of being included in any summer or winter Olympics.

All current Winter Olympic sports depend on either ice or snow to occur. Part of the resistance to including XC running in the Winter Olympics is XC running events do not depend on ice or snow as an essential element of the competition. XC running is possible on ice or snow, but there are few XC running events regularly held on ice or snow.

If XC running somehow made it into the Winter Olympics it would not necessarily have to be on snow or at altitude. There have been many Winter Olympics where there are numerous other venues for various sports (sports that depend on ice such as speed skating, figure skating, hockey, curling luge etc.) at lower elevations and/or in places where there is not any (or as much) snow. These ice sliding venues are often located far from the snow sliding venues. For the ice sliding sports they create specific venues with human made ice.

It is unlikely that the Olympic level nordic ski courses would be used for an Olympic Cross Country running competition. FIS regulations specify that elite level nordic ski courses be challenging for nordic skiers, with a total climb of 250-420 meters over a 10km course. For the metrically challenged that is 820-1377 feet of climbing over a 6.2-mile route, with the same amount of descent.

That amount of climb and descent is far beyond any all known cross-country running courses (guessing the 10km course in Tallahassee had perhaps less than 80 meters of total climb, so imaging a cross country running course that was over three to eight times hillier than that).

Running cross country on nordic ski courses would be more similar to running trail and mountain races than running track and road races, and would likely not attract as many top track and road racing athletes.

Also, high quality groomed nordic ski tracks generally prohibit all foot travel to preserve the snow surface, and making an exception for a bunch of runners would be disliked.

Then you should get the cities you want to visit to put up money and put forth proposals for those championships. USATF/World Athletics only award competitions to those cities that want to host them.

Putting it in the same spot every time ruins the whole point of World Cross. The variety of terrain is what makes it interesting. If it’s just going to be a flat, manicured course every year, it might as well just be a road race.

Thanks for the Tupelo shoutout. I went. Drove it and that was shorter than some of the flights noted.

Florida actually has a strong high-speed train network built recently, in contrast to California that can't get theirs built. It just doesn't access Tallahassee because no one wants to go there because as mentioned it's not a very big place.

There used to be Amtrak service to Tallahassee but it was damaged during Hurricane Katrina and not repaired due to low ridership.

WTF? The "obstacles" in cross country are lower than the barriers in the women's steeplechase. Knee high, few and far between.

Population of Tallahassee metro area: 392,650
Population of Eugene metro area: 381,181