Bathurst Australia Will Host The 2021 IAAF World Cross Country Championships
The world’s best long distance runners will descend on Bathurst in 2021 for the IAAF World Cross Country Championships, as Australia hosts an IAAF World Athletics Series event for the first time in 25 years
The event will be held at one of Australia’s most famous sporting venues, Mount Panorama, which is better known as the home of Australia’s premier endurance motor race, but will now welcome more than 700 competitors from 60 countries around the world
The announcement comes on the back of Athletics Australia, Destination New South Wales and the City of Bathurst liaising closely with the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) over the past few months,.
The event will be held in Bathurst on 20 March 2021 and will bring together
Athletics Australia CEO, Darren Gocher, said the announcement was an exciting one for Australian distance running and believes that the event being on home soil will be great for Australian athletics.
“Australia has been very successful in hosting world sporting events in the past, so we are very excited to welcome athletes from all around the world back to Australia,” Mr Gocher said.
“This will be a great opportunity for our athletes to compete on the world stage on home soil, which as we saw from the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games can produce some great performances.”
Member for Bathurst Paul Toole said Bathurst is home to some of the best trail running terrain and scenery in the country making it the perfect place to stage the World Cross Country Championships, which is the oldest competition on the IAAF calendar.
“The Central West offers first-class hospitality and has a proud track record of hosting major sporting events, and I am delighted the NSW Government has partnered with Athletics Australia to secure this major event for our community,” Mr Toole said.
The first official IAAF World Cross Country Championships (WXC) was held in Belgium in 1973, but the tradition of cross country racing dates back to the late 1800s.
The most recent edition of the WCC was held in Kampala, Uganda in 2017 and attracted more than 550 runners from 60 countries, competing in men’s, women’s, under 20 and mixed relay categories.
Denmark will host the IAAF 2019 World Cross Country on March 30, which will see 24 Australians competing.
