There are only five days to go until the final major event of the athletics season: the SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Tilburg on 9 December.
This is the second part of our alphabetic retrospective of the championships which will be staged for the 25th time on Sunday. We published the first part yesterday and we will be publishing our first event previews from tomorrow afternoon.
N is for Norway
What an incredible summer it was for the Ingebrigtsen brothers at the European Championships in Berlin and now they chase more success for Norway here in Tilburg, with Filip and Henrik in the men’s senior race and Jakob defending his crown in the U20 event. Karoline Bjerkeli Grovdal also won a medal in Berlin and is among the favourites in the women’s race.
O is for Ozbilen
He might not have been the favourite in a strong Turkish men’s line up in Samorin last year but Kaan Kigen Ozbilen produced the performance of his career to win by nine seconds in 29:45 from Spain’s Adel Mechaal to maintain his country’s amazing record at the senior event where they have taken the title on the last four occasions. He is back seeking a successful defence of both his individual and team title.
P is for Portugal
Paulo Guerra had a memorable first European Cross Country Championships in Alnwick, Great Britain in 1994. His victory in the men’s individual race over 9.5km came in a Portuguese one-two as he triumphed in 27:43 from Domingos Castro in 27:59 while the nation took the team title as well. Guerra went on to the win the event on three more occasions (1995, 1999, 2000) and all eyes will be on Lisbon next year when the championships return to Portugal.
Q is for quota
Each nation is allowed to enter a quota of eight athletes in each individual event of which a maximum of six can compete. They can enter six in the mixed relay, with four competing – two men and two women.
R is for race times
The competition will start at 10.45am local time with the women’s U20 race, followed by the men’s U20 (11:05am), women’s U23 (11:35am), men’s U23 (12:05pm), senior women’s (1:35pm), senior men (2:10pm) and mixed relay (2:55pm).
S is for spectacular seventh
An honour which goes to Türkiye’s Aras Kaya, the defending men’s champion in Samorin last year. He was among the favourites again but in third place early on, he fell and went flying on a difficult turn. He recovered from what looked like a spike from behind and still finished as their second runner home in seventh, helping Türkiye to win team gold. He is back again and seeing a more straightforward race this time no doubt.
Some drama in the early stages of the senior men's race with reigning champion Aras Kaya taking a tumble. pic.twitter.com/ePphbAsPfM
— European Athletics (@EuroAthletics) December 10, 2017
T is for Tilburg
The Dutch city is one of three cities to have staged the European Cross Country Championships on more than one occasion. Situated in the southern province on North Brabant, Tilburg first hosted the competition in 2005 when Ukraine’s Sergiy Lebid won the men’s senior race and, in front of a home crowd, Lornah Kiplagat won the senior women’s title.
U is for U20 glory...at last
And that was certainly the case for Great Britain’s Harriet Knowles-Jones who finally won U20 gold in Samorin last year in 13:48, a nine-second triumph ahead of Hungary’s Lili Toth. The previous winter Knowles-Jones had finished third in Chia and second the previous year in Hyeres. But now she has gold.
V is Velenje
Alnwick was the first town to stage the European Cross Country Championships twice and Tilburg will be the third. The second was the Slovenian town of Velenje in 1999 and 2011. Paulo Guerra and Switzerland’s Anita Weyermann won the senior titles in 1999 before Belgium’s Atelaw Bekele and Ireland’s Fionnuala McCormack (then Britton) followed suit in 2011.
W is for Weather
Showers are expected with a high of eight degrees centigrade. Conditions can play such a big part in this competition, with the need to keep your footing on the trickier parts of the course that could be wetter and heavier than others.
X is for X-bionic.
The x-bionic sphere is the incredible sporting complex in Samorin, Slovakia, which staged the European Cross Country Championships in 2018. It covers a total of one million square metre and is the country’s official Olympic training centre for 27 Olympic sports.
Y is for Yasemin
Yasemin Can, the defending women’s champion from Türkiye going for a hat-trick, has an amazing record on the European stage, with four major track golds (senior 10,000m and 5000m champion in 2016 and U23 10,000m and 5000m champion in 2017) along with 5000m bronze in Berlin this summer and 3000m silver at last year’s European Indoors in Belgrade.
Z is for Zebras
Around 1500 animals are housed in the Beekse Bergen Safari Park which will play host to this year’s European Cross Country Championships including zebras, leopards, giraffes and elephants. It is also the largest zoo in the Benelux region.