Three-time senior women’s winner Karoline Bjerkeli Grøvdal and twice senior men’s champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen will spearhead a powerful Norwegian team selected for the 2024 SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Antalya, Türkiye on 8 December.
Grøvdal won her third successive title at last year’s event in Brussels and will be eyeing up the prospect of equalling Türkiye’s Yasemin Can’s run of four successive senior women’s titles 2016-2019.
Grøvdal also won gold on the roads at the Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships over the half marathon distance and will be seeking to crown another excellent season with her second major continental title of the season.
Ingebrigtsen missed last year’s event in Brussels due to injury and will be keen to regain the title he won in both 2021 and 2022.
The Olympic 5000m gold medallist will be joined in the senior men’s team by older brother Filip, who also won this race in 2018, last year's surprise individual bronze medallist Magnus Tuv Myhre and world 1500m bronze medallist Narve Gilje Nordas.
Andreas Fjeld Halvorsen, 3000m gold medallist at this summer’s World Athletics U20 Championships in Lima, Peru is named in the men’s U20 team while European U18 1500m bronze medallist Wilma Bekkemoen Torbiörnsson is another potential medallist n the women's U20 race.
Chris Broadbent for European Athletics