Belgian Cross Country Championships
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Belgian Cross Country Championships (Dutch: Belgische kampioenschappen veldlopen) is an annual cross country running organised by the Royal Belgian Athletics League that serves as the national championship for the sport in Belgium. It was usually held in February or March until 2023 but from there on out, the championships are organized in the autumn, usually in November.
It was first held in 1896 for men only. A separate women's championship was created in 1970 and the national championship races for both sexes were held in conjunction from 1988 onwards. A short race was added to the programme in 1992, which served as with national selection for that section at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships from 1998 to 2006.
Guest athletes from other nations occasionally compete at the competition, but are not eligible for the national title. Several guests have gone on to place first in the race. In the men's long race New Zealand's Gavin Thorley in 1971, Burundi's Hilaire Ntirampeba in 2000 and Ethiopia's Faisa Dame Tasama in 2007 and 2013. In the women's long race, Lithuania's Stefanija Statkuvienė in 1996 and Ethiopia's Mimi Belete in 2008. The 2012 men's short race was won by Morocco's Abdellah Dacha.
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This entry incorporates text from “Belgian Cross Country Championships” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.