Mid-autumn. Tomorrow is expected to be a warm and sunny day with temperatures below 20 degrees Celsius (i.e. Celsius). Tick and tick again: it should be the opening cross-country race of the Australian winter season.
You can get a sunburn on the first day of winter. You can do it again at the national championships that traditionally conclude the season. And in between, you may or may not encounter what is often said in the Northern Hemisphere as “true cross-country conditions.”
But it’s not just the impending cross-country Victorian relay rides – which will take place before most of you get a chance to read this – that have caught my attention across the country this week. There was also a report that the International Olympic Committee had decided not to compete in cross country at the 2030 Winter Olympics to be hosted by the French Alps region of Haute-Savoie.
No cross-sports – the IOC’s term for events that are not contested only in winter – will not be added to the 2030 edition of the Games. This was a decision of the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee. Technically, the decision must be ratified during the IOC’s special full session in Lausanne next month. But this seems to be a foregone conclusion, especially since the new president of the International Olympic Committee, Kirsten Coventry, revealed this herself in a press conference.
Also technically, the decision does not close the door to a future decision to include cross country in the Winter Olympic programme. Coventry confirmed that a different phase of exploration could allow entry to the 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. I suggest you take that with a grain of the city substance that bears its name.
“It will just be snow and ice,” Coventry said when announcing that summer and cross-country (i.e. mostly winter, such as cross-country and cyclo-cross) sports were not suitable for the French Alps. I think things may change, but “snow and ice” has been the prevailing slogan in rejecting all previous attempts to include cross-country racing in the Winter Olympics.
Do you remember January 2026? Well, even the most forgetful among us probably remember what happened just a few months ago. That was when the last edition of the World Cross Country Championships was held in Tallahassee, just a few years after the IAAF announced that cross country would have its own season, culminating with the World Championships in February. Only one of the three editions since then – Bathurst in 2023 – has been held in February.
It would certainly have been difficult to pinpoint a date when a global pandemic threw international sporting calendars into disarray in the first half of the 2020s. It has already been decided that, two years after the World Cross Country Championships adopted an even-year schedule, remember that the event will return to the odd-year schedule. The next edition will be in 2029. We have returned to odd years at the expense of skipping 2027, it seems. We started 2020 four years apart between Aarhus and Bathurst; Now there will be a three-year gap between Tallahassee and 2029.
In trying to make sense of this situation, this columnist noted that the IAAF was optimistic that world cross-country would be added to the 2030 Winter Olympic programme, despite a group of winter sports federations that remained staunchly opposed.
The World Cross Country Championships at the Winter Games might be Plan A, as we suggested at the time. But if that doesn’t happen, we wondered what the backup plan would be. Whatever it is, it may be time to pull it out of the bottom desk drawer.
However, in a roundabout way, there was another global reminder across the country when rosters emerged for this weekend’s (May 16) Diamond League meet in Shanghai. At least five Australians – Sarah Billings, Abby Caldwell, Linden Hall, Claudia Hollingsworth and Jess Hall – are behind in the women’s 1500m (it used to be six, but Georgia Griffiths is not competing now).
Last January, Australia won the mixed relay in Tallahassee. This followed his bronze medal at Bathurst two years ago. These two medals built on our strength and depth in the men’s and women’s 1500. Olly Hoare, Hall, Jack Anstey and Hall made up Florida’s gold medal team. Hoare, Caldwell, Stuart McSwain and Hall were the bronze medal team at Mount Panorama.
China offers us regional advantages – a (relatively) short flight, without much time change, Australian autumn to spring in the Northern Hemisphere – but it’s not often that we see five Australians in a Diamond League 1500 event (Ethiopia also has five in the 16-man field). This is real recognition at a very high level of competition.
I can’t wait to go live.
