Cross-Country: The Greatest Sport Not in the Olympic Games

The Early Years

• The Early Years
• Direct addressment of this question hasn’t happened seriously in more than six years, but the history of the connection goes back more than 120. At the time of the modern revival of the Olympic Games by Pierre de Coubertin in 1896, cross-country running was just beginning to gain popularity outside the four home nations of the United Kingdom.
• England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Belgium, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States all had organized and legitimized cross-country running by the time the modern Olympic iteration appeared (including national amateur championships in XC and a blossoming collegiate scene). And soon, a “Cross des Nations” championship was held in March 1898, marking the first international meeting between two countries (the forebearer to the International Cross Country Championship; an event that would eventually become the modern IAAF World Cross Country Championship we see today).

It wasn’t long before Percy Fischer declared, “Thanks to the good offices of the British representatives in the International Olympic Committee, the 800 meters, the 10,000-meter run, and a cross-country race of five miles were added to the program of the Games of Stockholm 1912.” 20 months later, at the fifth Olympiad in 1912, a Cross Country Individual and Team Championship appeared for the first time.

The three editions of this event (in 1912, 1920, and 1924) featured strong running by the Swedes and Finns, two nations not represented at the International Cross Country Championship at the time, and shocked the British representatives who felt they should win going away. In all three cases the event ran as the cumulative end to the summer program; distance runners ran the cross-country race as a finalé to their track exploits. Finland’s Hannes Kolehmainen (1912), and Paavo Nurmi (1920 and ’24) were the event’s individual gold medalists.

But the sport of cross-country, which was (and still is to this day) practiced almost exclusively in the autumn, winter and early spring months, faced harsh consternation from the International Olympic Committee after the 1924 Summer Olympic event in Paris. That particular race saw only 15 runners finish out of a field of 39 starters. The combination of extreme heat, a tough course, noxious fumes from a nearby factory, and little shade from the elements (and lack of proper hydration) meant ambulances were on the course for hours afterward. Eight athletes were taken away on stretchers and two were pronounced dead from heat exhaustion — prematurely, as it turned out. The event was banned by the committee thereafter due to “safety reasons”.