European Athletics (EAA) – News – Turning the clock back 12 years and forward seven months

Twelve years, minus one day, after Velenje last staged the SPAR European Cross Country Championships, the event will return to the Slovenian city on 11 December.

The 1999 championship is remembered vividly for its difficult and muddy conditions but also some great races as well.

European Athletics hopes that turning the clock back to the final SPAR European Cross Country Championships of the last century might provide some inspiration ahead of this year’s event and a little insight into what could lie in store for this year’s competitors.

Portugal’s Paulo Guerra won the third of his four senior men’s titles in 1999 to cement his place as one of the continent’s greatest cross country runners.

Guerra and his team-mate Eduardo Henriques worked together to break away from an eight-man leading pack just after the halfway point in, before he changed gear and dropped his compatriot with a kilometre to go.

“The second half was very difficult, it was getting more muddy as the race progressed, but I have to admit I enjoyed it. I could not train during the summer so it’s a surprise that I was able to do so well today,” said Guerra after his triumph.

More than a decade later, a grin still comes to his face when he recalls his victory in the Slovenian slop.

“I think I still look back on it as maybe my most enjoyable win in the SPAR European Cross Country Championships. Winning the first one in 1994 will always be in the history books, but this remains special, partly because of the circumstances in which I won: the mud and far from ideal preparation. However, I also beat some fantastic runners that year,” he added, talking to European Athletics before last year’s Championships on home soil in Albufeira where he was a deserved guest of honour.

“There was Eduardo, who was in great shape and must be one of the best European cross country runners of the last 20 years not to win this title, Britain’s Jon Brown was third and he had been a former champion, and Stefano Baldini (Italy’s 2004 Olympic Games marathon champion) was in the top 10.

“There was also Sergey Lebid behind me, what more can I say about him,” said Guerra in December.

Lebid had won the first of his nine titles the year before in Ferrara, Italy, but slipped – literally and metaphorically – back to seventh in Velenje. “I think that race maybe taught me more about running in the mud than almost any other race,” reflected Lebid ruefully.

“My experience there was to help me a lot at the 2001 World Cross Country Championships in Belgium, a very muddy course again, and I got the silver medal."

It will also be a lesson he expects to use to good effect in seven months time.

At the age of 35, Lebid is still going strong. After winning in Albufeira, he now has a record nine SPAR Cross Country Championships titles to his name, has competed in all 17 editions of the Championships, and fully intends to defend his title later this year.

The senior women’s race in 1999 was won by Switzerland’s Anita Weyermann, sporting blazing red hair, and she remains her country’s only gold medallist at the event.

Sadly, injuries brought Weyermann’s career to a premature end three years ago but some of the women who finished behind her are still at the top of their profession and could also return to Velenje.

Great Britain’s 2011 European Athletics Indoor Championships 3000m gold medallist Helen Clitheroe, who appears in the result under her maiden name Pattinson, finished 19th while Hayley Yelling, who was to go on and win the women’s title in 2004 and 2009, was making the second of her 13 appearances to date and finished 26th.

Even further back was Spain’s top female cross country last winter Alessandra Aguilar, seventh in Albufeira but who finished a lowly 33rd in Velenje. The 32-year-old Galician is another runner who is hoping to reacquaint herself with Slovenian hospitality.

The junior women’s champion from 12 years ago was Portugal’s Ines Monteiro, who has progressed to being one of Europe’s top distance runners. She has won the European Cup 10000m for the last two years.

“I had to miss running in Albufeira because of injury but it shows how important I think the SPAR European Cross Country Championships are because I have only missed one other race since I made my debut in 1997. I hope to be in Velenje and challenging for medals again,” said Monteiro, who also won the bronze medal as a senior at the 2008 Championships.

Belgium’s Hans Janssens won the junior men’s race 12 years ago and although  he has never quite fulfilled his early promise, although he’s still very involved in the sport and finished 44th as a senior as recently as two years ago at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships.

However, behind Janssens, two young runners who caught the eye were a 16-year-old Mo Farah and his team-mate Chris Thompson, who finished fifth and 11th respectively. Eleven years later they were in the same team together again and took the 10,000m gold and silver medals at the European Athletics Championships last summer.

In separate races last year, they were also the only two European runners to go under 28 minutes for 25 laps of the track.

Farah and Thompson helped Great Britain to also take the junior men’s team honours in 1999 which led Dave Clarke, the British team manager on that day and a cross country star himself in the 1970s and '80s, to comment: “This is the best set of youngsters Britain has produced for several years.”

How right he was, and it would be no surprise to see many of the teenagers who finish in the top 10 in Velenje this year around to contest the distance medals on the track at the 2018 or 2020 European Athletics Championships or to be still among the leaders at SPAR European Cross Country Championships a decade or so down the road.

European Athletics (EAA) – News –