Edinburgh 2008 World Cross Country Champs Logo (© c)
MonteCarloThe 36th IAAF World Cross Country Championships take place in Edinburgh, Scotland on 30 March 2008, and the Local Organising Committee have today officially launched their website for the championships.
This IAAF World Athletics Series (WAS) event was awarded to Edinburgh (GBR) by the IAAF Council at its meeting in November 2006 in Monaco (MON).
The venue will be Holyrood Park which hosted the EAA Cross Country Championships in 2003, and the Great Edinburgh International Cross Country Race, an IAAF Permit Race, in the last three years.
The Scottish capital is the second city in Scotland to host what is the oldest of the IAAF WAS events which came under the IAAF’s banner in 1973, as Glasgow held the World Cross Country Championships in 1978.
The forerunner of the IAAF World Cross Country Championships was the International Cross Country Championships which were first staged at Hamilton Park Race Course, Hamilton, Scotland on 28 March 1903. Therefore Scotland’s hosting of the 2008 edition will be a physical as well as a spiritual coming home for the discipline of cross country running.
In total, the IAAF Member Federation of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have held 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 the aforementioned edition in Glasgow in 1978.
Chris Turner for the IAAF
