Cross Country Running in the Olympics
- Cross-Country was introduced into the 1912 Stockholm Games: the race incorporated a team competition.
Apparently the organisers did not allow the competitors to know anything in advance about the course.
In the words of the Official Report of the Games: "It is true that the team from Great Britain was the
favourite, but the course was probably all too difficult to allow the British runners to show their
proper speed over the 8,000 metres". Judging by the times recorded, the race distance was nearer 12km.
(or maybe the course really was difficult); the athletes ran two laps, starting and finishing in the
stadium and re-entering at half-way.
- Information on the event in the 1920 Antwerp Games is hard to come by: the usual Official Report
of the Games was never produced, as the Organising Committee of the Games went bankrupt in mid-Olympics.
The race was nominally over 10km, but as the winner of both events, the Finnish star Paavo Nurmi (right), won
his Cross-Country Gold in a time 4½ minutes faster than his track victory, there must be just a little
doubt about the accuracy.
- Nurmi returned to Olympic Cross-Country competition in Paris in 1924. The race was, unfortunately,
held on one of the hottest days Paris had ever known, and fumes from a nearby factory didn't help matters.
Nurmi and fellow-Finn Ville Ritola finished
first and second, but they needed a third finisher for the team Gold. The third Finnish runner,
Heikki Liimatainen, was, like most of the other athletes, struggling in the heat (only 15 of 38 starters
finished). Liimatainen was stumbling near the finish, overcome by the heat, stopped 30 metres
short of the finish, and tried to turn off the course. But the crowd yelled at him that he had not
yet crossed the finish line, and he returned to the course disoriented and walked across the finish line,
taking over two minutes to finish his last 30 metres. Unsurprisingly, the event was then dropped from the
Summer Olympics programme.
To view some images from the 1924 Official Olympic Report Click Here.
- So why not move Cross-Country into the Winter Olympics? It has been suggested:
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