The cream of continental cross country club runners will descend on the European Champion Clubs Cup Cross Country in Albufeira, Portugal on Sunday (25).
A total of 98 teams featuring 379 athletes have submitted their final entries for the event, making it the biggest edition in recent years of an event which dates back to 1962.
The championships will be streamed in its entirety through Eurovision Sport with separate English, French and Spanish commentaries, with extensive coverage of the event on the European Athletics website and social media channels. The stream will be geo-blocked in Portugal but Portuguese viewers will be available to watch on Sport TV3.
Playas de Castellon are once again expected to be in the mix for the major prizes. The Spanish outfit took home a golden collection from last year’s event on home turf in Oropesa del Mar, collecting the senior men’s team, senior men’s individual, senior women’s team, mixed relay and women’s U20 individual titles in a memorable day for the club.
Their team prospects in the women’s race will be headed by the Ethiopian-born Likina Amebaw who has been based in Spain for six years and is in the process of gaining Spanish citizenship.
While part of a title-winning team last year, Amebaw might have been slightly disappointed to have only finished sixth individually but the 26-year-old - who won the individual title in 2022 on Portuguese soil in Oeiras - has hit a rich vein of form, recently winning the Monaco Run 5K in 14:35.
The Spaniards will have three teams competing in Albufeira and with two individual finishers inside the top-eight last year, C.A. Adidas will be strong contenders for the team title if Irene Sanchez-Escribano and Agueda Marques can repeat their second and eighth-place finishes from last year.
The surprise winner last year was Anjelina Nadai Lohalith, a South Sudan-born athlete who is part of the Athlete Refugee Team. But on this occasion, the 29-year-old - who has modest track lifetime bests of 4:23.84 for 1500m and 15:33.85 for 5000m but - will wear the colours of Israel’s Hapoel Tel-Aviv AC again.
In the context of individual honours, two of the favourites will be wearing the vests of Portuguese clubs. One of the in-form runners on the European circuit this winter, Kenya’s Edinah Jebotik - who recently dominated a high quality race in Hannut, beating European U23 cross country champion Megan Keith among others - will be looking for victory in the colours of Sporting Clube de Portugal.
Meanwhile, Sporting Clube de Braga will be represented by 19-year-old African U20 3000m champion Asmarech Anley from Ethiopia who has lifetime bests of 14:41 for 5km and 30:31 for 10km on the roads. Braga's challenge for team honours will be fortified by the presence of multiple European U20 and U23 cross country medallist Mariana Machado.
In the U20 women’s race, Edibe Yağiz took double silver last year in the individual competition with her club Fenerbahce Spor Kulubu and is back again for another medal tilt on both fronts along with her clubmate Dilek Kocek, the reigning European U20 1500m champion and silver medal over 800m.
Last year’s individual bronze medallist Margot Dajoux is also in the line-up, representing France’s Clermont Auvergne Athlétisme, who also took bronze in the team event in 2023.
The men and women will race over the same distances with the senior races over a five-lap course totalling 9.28km while the U20s contest races of three laps totalling 5.62km. The mixed relay is over four shorter legs and has a total distance of 6.13km.
Steven Mills for European Athletics