Zersenay Tadese and Kenenisa Bekele in the leading pack at the 2007 World Cross Country Championships in Mombasa, Kenya (© Getty Images)
MonteCarloThe eleven individual meetings which make up the calendar of IAAF Cross Country Permit Series 2007/08 begin this weekend in Oeiras, Portugal, on Saturday 17 November 2007, and conclude in Fukuoka, Japan on Sunday 2 March 2008.
The season will culminate four weeks later with the 36th IAAF World Cross Country Championships which take place in Edinburgh, Scotland (GBR) on 30 March 2008.
The most important cross country event of them all, the annual global championships are the oldest IAAF World Athletics Series event. In total, the IAAF Member Federation of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has hosted the World Cross Country Championships on five previous occasions, with the English cities of Chepstow (1976), Gateshead (1983), Durham (1995), and Belfast in Northern Ireland (1999) being honoured with the responsibility as well as Glasgow, Scotland (1978).
The story of the 2006/07 cross country season was of course the Mombasa triumph of Zersenay Tadese of Eritrea who ended the string of five consecutive championship winning years at the senior level for Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele.
The Ethiopian bounced back last summer to take his third World 10,000m track title, and has already declared his participation against Tadese in the Great Edinburgh International Cross Country on 12 January 2008. This race takes place at Holyrood Park, the venue for the World Champs, and will be the fifth of the eleven permit meetings in the 2007/08 IAAF series.
The first IAAF meeting of the winter in Oeiras this Saturday 17 November, also acts nationally as one of the selection races for the Portuguese team for the European Cross Country Championships. The same will also be the case for Spanish athletes at the second IAAF meeting in Soria, Spain on Sunday 25 November. The general ambitions of the best runners from across the continental which are directed at those European championships on 9 December 2007 in Toro, Spain, will provide an exciting sub-plot during the opening of the IAAF season.
Follow all the global cross country season action on the IAAF Website, which as always will provide features, interviews, meeting previews, and reports throughout the season on -www.iaaf.org/WXC08/index.html
Chris Turner for the IAAF
IAAF Cross Country Permit meetings 2007 / 2008
November 2007
Sat 17 Oeiras (POR)
Sun 25 Soria (ESP)
December 2007
Sun 23 Brussels (BEL)
January 2008
Sat 5 Belfast (GBR)
Sat 12 Edinburgh (GBR)
Sun 20 Seville (ESP)
February 2008
Sun 3 San Vittore Olona (ITA)
Sat 9 Nairobi (KEN)
Sun 10 Chiba (JPN)
Sun 17 Diekirch (LUX)
March 2008
Sun 2 Fukuoka (JPN)
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30 March 2008 - 36th IAAF World Cross Country Championships, Edinburgh (GBR)
