Ulla Hansen, president of the Victoria International Cross Country Association acknowledged the team effort: “There are 12 of us on our board, and we started with this idea over a year ago…We’ve put a lot of work in over the last 12 months, and it’s interesting because we are all from such varied professions but full of expertise in so many different areas. We have an engineer, we have a land-management expert, we have some money and media experts. There’s only 12 of us but it’s all come together, and I couldn’t be more pleased.”

The Winter Olympic Question

A year and a half before the event was set to debut, the proposed course at Bear Mountain was hit with more than a foot of snow. The Canadian organizers were no strangers to this. Hansen shared: “When we had our volunteers night here [at Bear Mountain] there was snow up here. And there were so many people that came forward and said ‘I have a snow shovel. If there’s snow on the day, put me down to shovel!’”

It was unsurprising support given the location. When 2016 Rio Olympian and World Cross Country veteran for Team Canada Natasha Wodak shared her thoughts in the build-up to hosting PanAms, she didn’t bat around the issue. “We want to get cross-country in the Winter Olympics,” said Wodak, “We need to have it in a colder climate. So, it’ll be great to have it here, where it’s cooler, where it’s going to be a little more like World Cross. And I definitely think it’s a good starting point. We can show them how we do it, do it right, and then go on towards Worlds.”

While the benefits of having a cross-country running event on the Winter Olympic docket were numerous, the current reality of the situation was muddled. Harriers of all abilities could embrace snow running, remaining competitive in a challenging environment despite it — and it was also proven that a successful winter event on an international scale could be done in February in Western Canada if the conditions warranted it — Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympic Games were praised by World Athletics president Sebastian Coe (who was also lead organizer for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London) when he said, “Rarely have I seen a host city so passionate and so ready to embrace the Games”.

But after an unsuccessful attempt to get cross-country running in the Winter Games in October 2010, World Athletics was apprehensive in forcing the issue for the winter. Instead, following the successful World Cross event in Denmark in 2019, an international committee began preparations to forecast what it would look like to include cross-country in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

The reinclusion of the sport in the Summer Games, exactly 100 years since it was last featured there, gave pause to the idea that cross-country might have a chance at a serious Winter Games bid again. With resistance from the Winter IOC Committee already, it was likely the door would close for good if efforts successfully brought cross-country back to the Summer Games.

But among supporters it was President Coe who kept the prospect open. In an exclusive interview with Athletics Weekly reporter Jason Henderson in 2019, Coe shared: “If you look at the technicalities, it’s meant to be on ice or snow, but given the fact the IOC seem to choose places at the moment that have neither, then I’m not sure right now that it’s a big game changer…The Winter Olympics will be a fantastic platform for cross-country.” If the committee plan paid off, it was indisputable that cross-country running would benefit no matter what edition of the Olympic Games it appeared in.

The 2020 PanAm Debut

Staging an international cross country championship at a resort village on Canada’s Vancouver Island produced two immediate advantages. The first was that it was an ideal environment: mountainous, forested, and isolated from any societal interference. The second was that it was logistically practical: with the golf course mere feet from the lodge, everyone from athletes to officials could stay on site within easy reach of the event location. It helped that Bear Mountain Resort was stunning in its own right and delivered five-star service.