What first comes to mind when you think of cross country? Is it those early mornings at school you used to dread, forced to run through mud or the pouring rain? Or maybe you’re thinking about these latest World Championships in Tallahassee, a relatively glamorous event in comparison. Whatever it is, chances are you didn’t know the story behind it all. And once you do, you’ll understand that greater recognition is long overdue. Cross country has been stuck in the mud of public opinion for years, and it’s time to pull it out.

What exactly is cross country?

Although it sits under the umbrella of athletics, cross country is a sport in and of itself. As for the key differentiator, the clue is in the name: country. Cross country is a form of long distance running over natural terrain. That would be mud, hills, woodland, and even sometimes man-made obstacles. Basically anything to make your run just that little bit harder, stopping short of an actual assault course. 

Now this isn’t for the benefit of the viewer only. As funny as it is to see a runner lose their shoe in the mud (which does happen from time to time) the real beneficiaries are the athletes themselves. Cross country is a great test of strength as well as aerobic fitness. The varying terrain helps athletes learn to navigate a change of pace as well as build leg strength. It’s a different skill altogether to road or track distance running. With its positioning on the calendar during the autumn and winter months, it can be great preparation for the upcoming season. 

Technical rules

As for the race itself, courses are loops anywhere from 1.5-2km long. A mix of short and long distance races, both team and individual, are the usual format. You won’t see any records due to courses varying in length and difficulty, but the beauty of cross country is all in its unpredictability. Take the scoring for example. Teams are made up of 6-9 athletes, who each score points based on their finishing position. With one point going to first place, the team with lowest number of points overall ends up being the winner. 

There are other important rules to note too. The course should start with between 400m and 1200m of level, straight terrain to prevent crowding, clear markings should be laid throughout to guide runners, and the course must be at least 5 metres wide to allow for overtaking and the necessary media. When it comes to kit, cross country spikes are the typical footwear. While spike length will vary according to the terrain, 9-15mm is common. 

Now that you know the basics, let me take you back just over 200 years- to where it all began.

The history of cross country

Cross country as an organised sport first came about at a boys’ school in England in the year 1819. Although, back then they called it ‘Hare and Hounds’ or ‘Paper Chasing’, because of its ties to hunting. The leading group of runners were known as the hares, the prey in this scenario, and the chasers the hounds. The hares would drop paper scraps as they ran to give the hounds a trail to follow, hence the other name paper chasing. 

Over the next 20 years or so the sport gained popularity throughout schools in England, and eventually made its way into the curriculum. The most notable one was Rugby School. In 1837 they began a 12 mile run known as the Crick Run, an annual event that still goes on today. By the 1850s athletics clubs had started to incorporate paper chases into their training. Have you ever wondered why so many names of English athletics clubs end with the term ‘Harriers’? The answer is, of course, cross country. Harriers are a breed of dog used for hunting: an alternative name for the hounds the sport was originally named after. 

A world first

Then in 1869 came the creation of what would be a world first. A running club dedicated solely to cross country. Its name was the Thames Hare and Hounds, formed in South West London. It marked the beginning of cross country’s journey towards becoming a mainstream sport. This change coincided with the gradual removal of the paper scraps and the adoption of a more sophisticated format. This meant courses began to be marked with flags and races held across a wider variety of terrains.

This was all in the lead up to cross country’s next milestone. It came on the 7th December 1876, when the first ever National championships took place in England. Although it turned out a 5pm start time maybe wasn’t the best idea, and after many runners got lost in the dark, the event was later declared void. All it took though was a successful rerun to kick off what is now a yearly championship. The largest to date was Parliament Hill Fields in 2018 which recorded a massive 9,565 entries. Since then the venue has gone on to receive a World Athletics Heritage Award to honour its significance as the world’s oldest national cross country event.

The growth of international cross country

At this point cross country mostly lived and thrived in England. It wasn’t until the turn of the next century, specifically 1907, when it went international. Although the first international championships technically took place in 1903 between the different UK nations, France’s addition 4 years later marked the first overseas participant. As the years went by, this number would only increase. The first official cross country relay race also took place around this time in 1906. 5 teams of 3 men ran 2 miles each over a snow-covered course.

The success of cross country reached new heights in 1912. It made its way, as both a team and individual event, into the Stockholm Summer Olympics. Rather fittingly, host country Sweden came away the champion. Little did fans know however, that on a hot summer day in Paris in 1924, cross country’s Olympic journey would come crashing down. The race itself was a disaster. Out of 38 runners, only 15 reached the finish line. Not only that but a total of 8 participants had to be taken away on stretchers. Medics spent hours scouring the course for unconscious competitors. That, plus two unfounded reports of fatalities, was enough to put spectators off for life. Olympic officials banned cross country from future Summer Games, and have since rejected attempts at its return. Since 1928 it only features as the 5th discipline in the modern pentathlon.

Gender inequality

Unfortunately, while cross country was experiencing this rise in popularity, there was one group of people who weren’t able to have their share in it. Women. Not only was there a widely-held misconception that this type of running was harmful to their general health and reproductive ability, women also didn’t receive a proper education until much later, so weren’t in schools when it first originated. France was in fact the first country to hold a national championship for women in 1918. England, surprisingly, didn’t follow suit until 1927.

Female participation in international cross country then got off to a tentative start. This period saw the emergence of the legendary Diane Leather. She was the first woman to ever run a sub-5 minute mile and a 4 times national cross country champion. After over 30 years of competing informally, the IAAF established official rules for female cross country in 1962. The first international championship race for women took place in Barry, Wales in 1967.

Cross country takes over the world

From then on things only got better. Fast forward 6 years later to 1973, and cross country finally got its own major event. The World Cross Country Championships were born, and they beat the track equivalent by a whole 10 years. The initial format was of 4 races. 2 senior and 2 junior, with the senior men running 12km and the women 8km. Its first ever winners were Pekka Paivarinta of Finland and Italy’s Paola Pigni, who ended up setting 6 world records across her career. In 1998 a short course race of 2km was introduced alongside the long course race, but it only lasted until 2006. It did eventually come back though in the form of a mixed relay in 2017. That same year also saw both long course races move to 10km in order to promote gender equality. 

Success is a double-edged sword

These Championships served as the birthplace for some of the biggest stars, not only in cross country but in distance running overall. The most successful was Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia, who won 5 double titles in a row between the years 2002 and 2006, a feat which to this day remains unmatched. He leads a group of 3 other men each with 3 consecutive titles under their belt. Most recently Jacob Kiplimo of Uganda at the 2026 edition in Tallahassee, who also stands out for being the only one not from either Ethiopia or Kenya.

On the women’s side, Grete Waitz rewrote the history books with her record 5 titles and longest ever winning margin of 44 seconds achieved in 1980. From 21 participating countries in 1973, the event grew to a record 76 in 2000. By this point, the African dominance was stark. Kenya won the individual title in the senior men’s race 18 years in a row from 1986-2003. The senior men’s team race was won by either them or Ethiopia from 1981 all the way up to 2017. 

It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly things took a turn, but with such consistent displays of African greatness came growing fears that the championships were no longer generating the same excitement as before. A once annual event became biennial in 2011. This sentiment also paved the way for the creation of the European Cross Country Championships, whose inaugural event took place in Alnwick, Great Britain in 1994, and still goes on every December. Its first senior individual winners were Paulo Guerra of Portugal and Catherina McKiernan of Ireland.

Cross country’s present day problems

All of this brings us back to the present day. A sport that used to unite runners across the world, both professionals and amateurs, has never been more divisive. The latest World Cross Country Championships in Tallahassee brought a number of problems we dismissed in the past straight back up to the surface. Forget the Florida gators, cross country has a shark in its waters, and that shark is a decreasing relevancy and interest from both fans and runners themselves. 

The viewer vs athlete balance

This year, 485 runners turned up in Tallahassee. That same figure used to lie around the 800 mark in the 2000s, with many European countries deciding not to send a team. The most notable absence was Italy, the home country of Nadia Battocletti, who has won a total of 8 golds to date across her cross country career. The course itself had visual appeal for the viewer, with its bright blue lake and ‘rollercoaster element’, but it raised the question of whether cross country is drifting ever further from its roots, where runners would pass through more challenging and natural landscapes. If courses become easier, the nature of cross country itself changes. What was once a strategic, strength-based race, becomes more of a test of natural endurance.

They say don’t bite the hand that feeds you, but what if that same hand is also stabbing you in the back? Making courses more fun might draw in viewers but if it does it’s at the cost of athletes. What they need are incentives, so that when a cross country event and a 10km road race land on the same weekend, there actually is a decision to be made. The question of what exactly that incentive would look like is another discussion altogether, but it could be anything from the chance to qualify for the world championships on the track to a bigger focus on broadcasting. Whatever it is, there’s no denying something needs doing.

It all comes back to money

And then there’s also the issue of funding. As you know by now, cross country does require a different skillset to road or track running. There are runners who specialise in the discipline, but a career purely as a cross country runner is difficult to sustain. The prize for first place at the World Cross Country Championships is US$30,000, compared to a much bigger US$70,000 for first place at the World Athletics Championships on the track. Both are biennial events, but the difference is track athletes also have the Diamond League running every season and the Olympics every 4 years. Those are two other money-making opportunities for them to benefit from.

Sponsors also aren’t looking for the displays of skill or strength you get in cross country. What they want are times, and those only really appear either on the road or on the track. A lot of athletes are therefore choosing to forgo the cross country season altogether to not risk derailing their indoor season, which comes very soon after on an already crowded athletics calendar. 

A new chapter for cross country?

However, this could all be about to change. World Athletics president Seb Coe is petitioning for cross country to become a Winter Olympics sport. If this proposal is accepted, cross country will gain appreciation as a sport in and of itself, with enough funding and recognition to allow athletes to focus solely on it and not be forced to try and translate that ability to the track. This inclusion would also lead to a more equal world representation at the Winter Olympics. Most notably Africa, who has never won a medal at these championships, but would almost certainly gain its first with cross country.

For a sport with such a rich history, the reality of its struggling present is hard to swallow. But the story of cross country is one of several phases, and right now we’re entering a new one. One that has the potential to change its trajectory forever.