If You Build It,

They Will Come

It was a celebration of cross-country running 200 years in the making, and the end result just might resuscitate a sport that was on the verge of being lost.

Words By Andrew Boyd Hutchinson

Photos by Lone Dybdal





The excitement was palpable. For those who cared about the status of the sport — in the buildup to the 2019 IAAF World Cross-Country Championships — there were flashes and glimmers of real hope that it was going to be conducted differently. That the global council would finally “get it right”, and that the small ember of heat that was resting under the tinder of potential flame would reignite and bring cross-country back as a roaring bonfire that would warm the other offerings of athletics.

One hundred years previously the sport of cross-country had been strong enough, and relevant enough, to be celebrated in the Olympic Games as the finale to the athletics calendar. Two hundred years previously it had been born out of the thrill of rushing out of bounds, with friends, to revel in the risk and extreme of pure nature: hedge rows, water splashes, logs, and certainly copious amounts of mud included.

But the 2019 version of the sport had been reduced to the fringes of running. It was participated by youth and pockets of purists the world over, but lost exposure amongst more popular, media-savvy offerings on the track and roads. Thus, those who would otherwise make cross-country a priority for all occasions had to decide where it fit around other formats.

The time was ripe to try something new…So the Danish Athletics Federation looked forward, by looking back, to take stock of only the best elements of the game that would provide the spark that cross-country needed.

Jakob Larsen, leader of the Danish Athletics Federation, knew this: “This has from day one, been about turning people’s heads. Whatever we could come up with that would make people turn their heads, then yes, let’s do this.”

