The SPAR European Cross Country Championships is less than 100 days away and the road to Antalya 2024 begins in earnest this weekend with the beginning of the 2024-25 World Athletics Cross Country Tour in Europe.
What’s coming up?
The tour begins this weekend with the famous TCS Lidingöloppet near Stockholm, one of six World Athletics Cross Country Tour Silver events on the European calendar ahead of the SPAR European Cross Country Championships on 8 December.
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The full World Athletics Cross Country Tour Silver and Bronze calendar can be found here
The Lidingöloppet is something of an outlier on the cross country circuit as the focal point of the programme is the classic 30km race, a distance which is four times that of the senior races in Antalya where the seniors will contest a 7.5km course.
But there will be high hopes of Swedish success in both elite races. Two-time Olympian Carolina Wikström makes her competitive debut in the Lidingöloppet against the Danish-based Kenyan Sylvia Medugu, a four-time winner as well as the course record-holder with 1:51:56 from 2019.
In the men’s race, Swedish marathon champion Ebba Chala Tulu and Eritrea’s Samuel Russom - who has lived in Sweden since 2018 - are two of the likely contenders to add their name to a roll-of-honour which dates back to 1965 which makes the Lidingöloppet one of the oldest cross country races in Europe.
The TCS Lidingöloppet is also the world’s biggest cross country race with a strong mass participation element. This year, the event will welcome over 35,000 participants from 77 countries.
Aside from Lidingö, the World Athletics Cross Country Tour also heads to Ireland this weekend for the Castlegar International Cross Country in Galway, an event which has Bronze level status.
Focus on Antalya 2024
This year’s SPAR European Cross Country Championships is a particularly special one as it marks the 30th edition of a championships which made its debut in 1994 and has been held every year since then with the exception of 2020 due to the pandemic.
This will also be the first time Türkiye has staged the SPAR European Cross Country Championships and Antalya will be the most southerly venue in the three decade-long 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 multiple sections of sand and mud on each lap for the runners to contend with.
At the 2023 SPAR European Cross Country Championships which were held in muddy conditions in Brussels, Norway’s Karoline Bjerkeli Grøvdal powered to her third successive title while France’s Yann Schrub won gold in the senior men’s race. Great Britain & NI topped the medal table again with seven gold medals.
The SPAR European Cross Country Championships will be streamed live in its entirety on 8 December through the European Athletics website and will be accompanied by expert English-language commentary.
Steven Mills for European Athletics