This year’s SPAR European Cross Country Championships takes place in Antalya, the fifth largest city in Türkiye, on 8 December and will be the 30th edition of the championships.
This will be the first time Türkiye has staged the SPAR European Cross Country Championships and Antalya will be the most southerly venue in the 30-year history of the championships.
This year’s championships take place in the Dokuma Park in the north of Antalya on a largely flat albeit rhythm-sapping course with sections of sand and mud for the runners to navigate across the seven races.
Looking back at 2023…
At the SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Brussels last December, Norway’s Karoline Bjerkeli Grøvdal won her third successive senior women’s title, defeating soon-to-be Olympic 10,000m silver medallist Nadia Battocletti by 45 seconds.
In the senior men’s race, Yann Schrub took advantage of the absence of two-time reigning champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen to win the individual title while hosts Belgium came away with the team title on home soil ahead of France and Norway.
Great Britain topped the medal table once again, winning seven of the 13 gold medals on offer. Megan Keith made history by winning the U23 title by an incredible 1:23 - the biggest margin of victory in championship history - while Innes Fitzgerald and Will Barnicoat won the women’s U20 and men’s U23 titles respectively.
Anchored by European 3000m steeplechase champion Alexis Miellet, France won gold for the first time in the mixed relay while Denmark’s Axel Vang Christensen returned from illness and injury to regain his men’s U20 title, defeating Niels Laros in a sprint finish.
Full event replays from all seven races at the 2023 SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Brussels can be found on our YouTube channel.
A very brief history...
The SPAR European Cross Country Championships was held for the first time in Alnwick, Great Britain in 1994 when the inaugural champions were eventual four-time winner Paulo Guerra from Portugal and Ireland's Catherina McKiernan.
Only senior races were held in the first three editions of the European Cross Country Championships before the U20 races were added as an official event in 1997 (U20 races were held in 1996 albeit as an exhibition event) with the U23 races to follow in 2006 before the addition of the mixed relay in 2017.
For the first time in event history, parity was achieved between sexes in 2023 as the men and women raced over the same distances across their respective age-groups. Both senior races were held over 9km, meaning the women's race had doubled in distance from the first edition which was held over 4.5km.
Other notable champions in years gone by have included Paula Radcliffe (1998, 2003), Mo Farah (2006), Sifan Hassan (2015), Filip Ingebrigtsen (2018) and Jakob Ingebrigtsen who won four U20 titles between 2016-19 and senior gold in 2021-22.
Superlatives…
The most successful nation at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships is Great Britain with 83 gold medals and 189 medals in total ahead of France (35 gold medals), Spain (23 gold medals) and hosts Türkiye (22 gold medals).
The most successful athlete in championship history is Ukraine’s Serhiy Lebid who has won nine individual titles and 12 medals in total.
The most successful female athlete in championship history is Karoline Bjerkeli Grøvdal who has won 10 individual medals, including four gold medals (three senior titles in 2021-23 and U20 gold in 2009.)
The biggest winning margin in a senior race was in 2023 when Grøvdal won by 45 seconds ahead of Nadia Battocletti.
The smallest winning margin in a senior race is 0:00. Türkiye’s Polat Arikan Kemboi and Ali Kaya shared the same time of 32:19 for gold and silver in 2014 while Brits Gemma Steel and Kate Avery were first and second in the women’s race in 2014 in 28:27.
The biggest winning margin across all age-groups was in 2023 when Great Britain’s Megan Keith won the U23 title by 1:23.
The most prolific athletes in championship history are Ukraine’s Sergiy Lebid and Ireland’s Fionnuala McCormack who have made 19 and 18 appearances respectively at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships.
Steven Mills for European Athletics