Australia's Benita Willis leads 33rd World Cross Country Championships in Saint Galmier, France (© Photo by Paul Gilham/Getty Images)
Australia debuted at the World Cross Country championships in 1975, the third edition of the championships under the auspices of the International Amateur Athletics Association (IAAF).
The IAAF – now World Athletics – took over the International Cross Country Union championships which were first contested in 1903 by the four home countries of the United Kingdom, going ‘international’ with the addition of France in 1907, and other European countries through the 1920s.
Tunisia’s entry in 1958 brought African participation. The USA and New Zealand followed in the 1960s. An unofficial women’s Championship was introduced in 1931 but women were not given full recognition until almost 40 years later in 1967. Even then, the 1968 Championships were split, the men’s event in Tunis and the women’s in Blackburn, England.
Two years later, in 1970, the women’s Championships split largely between those who wanted to stay with the shorter distance and those who believed women capable of competing at longer distances. A 3km women’s event was held at the same venue as the men – Vichy, in France – and a 4km race in Frederick, Maryland USA the previous day.
Sticking with the official/unofficial distinction the Maryland women’s race saw Australia’s first participation at what is now the World Cross Country Championships. A team of three was selected – Rome 1960 Olympic 800 metres silver medallist Brenda Jones, marathon pioneer Adrienne Beames and winner of the 1969 women’s national title Raie Thomson of South Australia.
Another Australian – a Tasmanian Rhodes Scholar Alfred Clemes, who ran for England’s winning team in 1911 – is the only other known Australian participant in the ICCU Championships.
That’s the ancient history covered off: Australia’s modern history at the World Cross Country Championships began when eight men and five women competed in the 1975 Championships at the Hippodrome Rabat-Souissi in Rabat, Morocco.
An inauspicious start it was, too. Bill Scott was the first Australian home in the men’s race, coming in twenty-second; Lynne Williams led the women in fourth-fourth place. Both teams placed eleventh as New Zealand showed their trans-Tasman neighbours what could be done by winning the men’s teams race and finishing second in the women’s.
Indeed, in Australia’s 38-year history at the World Cross Country, competing bi-annually from 1975 to 1981, annually since 1985, just seven athletes have attained a top-10 placing (though four of those seven have done it on multiple occasions). To put that in context, however, the World Cross Country has been regarded as the toughest race in the world through most of its history and even now still brings together runners from middle-distance to the marathon. As with the track distances, recent events have been dominated by East African athletes.
Australia’s magnificent seven follow in chronological order, but there is no doubt which athlete ranks as our finest at world cross-country. Benita Willis is our only winner, our only individual medallist, and the leading finisher in our only two medal-winning teams. Her record is enhanced by the fact she competed in the short era when there were separate short and long-course races, but in eight appearances she ran nine races and finished in the top 10 in seven.
‘Deek’ our first top-10
The first Australian to break into the top-10 was Robert de Castella, who finished sixth in Madrid in 1981. There was something of the bizarre in this race as the entire Ethiopian team sprinted to the ‘finish’ line a lap too early, but de Castella backed up his first top-10 with two more. The following year, competing as an individual, he was tenth in Rome and then in Gateshead in 1983 he finished sixth again, following up with a win in the prestigious Cinque Mulini cross-country in Italy and against Carlos Lopes and Alberto Salazar in the Rotterdam marathon. A few months later he won the marathon at the first world championships in Helsinki.
Krishna Stanton, eighth, Warsaw 1987
The women’s race on Warsaw’s Sluzewiec Racecourse was a who’s who of stars – two-time winner Zola Budd, Annette Sergent, Ingrid Kristiansen, Liz McColgan, Lynn Jennings, Paula Ivan and Yvonne Murray. Twenty-year-old Stanton raced with the leaders from the start and was rewarded with eighth place, the first top-10 by an Australian woman.
Jackie Perkins, fifth, Stavanger 1989
No Australian had finished higher than de Castella’s sixth until Jackie Perkins glided over the Stavanger mud to fifth place behind two-time winner Sergent, Nadezhda Stepanova, Olympic bronze medallist Lynne Williams and Jane Ngotho. For an hour, she was Australia’s highest individual finisher until . . .
Steve Moneghetti, fourth, Stavanger 1989
. . . Steve Moneghetti came through the 200-strong men’s field and the sea of mud to finish fourth, three seconds out of a medal, behind John Ngugi, Tim Hutchings and Wilfred Kirochi. Like de Castella and Willis, Monner was a repeat top-10 finisher with a sixth in Boston three years later when falling snow was added to the mix along with mud.
Benita Willis, first, long-race, Brussels 2004
Benita Willis had finished sixth, fourth and fifth in the short race at world cross-country before trying her hand at the longer 8km distance in Brussels in 2004. She took to it like a duck to water, running away from her African rivals over the closing stages to Australia’s one, and still only, individual medal. For good measure, ‘B’ added a fourth and seventh to her long-race record and another fourth in the short-course before she was done.
Collis Birmingham, eighth, Bydgoszcz 2013
What is it about cold, mud and Ballarat athletes? Collis Birmingham made fans ponder that question once more as he made like a reindeer through the snow in Bydgoszcz’s Myslecinek Park to eighth place in 2013 capping a world cross-country journey which started with the junior men’s race in 2003.
Craig Mottram, eighth, short-course, Ostend, 2001
Like Benita Willis, Craig Mottram moved gradually from the short-course to the long-course race. He was a fixture in the short-course top-10, finishing eighth through the mud in Ostend in 2001 (Kenenisa Bekele second), then fifth in Dublin in 2002 and ninth in 2004 before his career-best thirteenth in the 2004 long-race.
And the pretty damn good . . .
Excluding the top-10s, others who have one of multiple top-20 long-race finishes include Steve Austin (15/1977), Carolyn Schuwalow (20/1983), Maree McDonagh (14/1989), Susan Hobson (18/1990. 16/1992), Jenny Lund (14/1991), Kate Richardson (16/1996), Kylie Risk (19/1998), Anna Thompson (16/2005, 18/2007), Lisa Weightman (17/2009) and Patrick Tiernan (13/2017).
By Len Johnson for WXC Bathurst 2023
