Legends of
the Cross
by Phil
Minshull
GRETE WAITZ - LYNN
JENNINGS
- JOHN NGUGI - CARLOS
LOPES
- GASTON ROELANTS
GRETE
WAITZ
(Norway)
 The Norwegian was the dominant
figure of women’s distance running during
the late 1970s and early 1980s. Waitz is best
known for her marathon exploits but she also won
five World Cross Country titles, four of them
consecutively between 1978 and 1981.
Cross country running was
her first love and her success motivated her to
put some effort into athletics. "In 1968 I
came third in the Oslo championship cross country
race. I was very proud and it was then that I
decided to train more consistently."
Racing sparingly until her
first World Championships, Waitz was unbeaten in
cross country races for 12 years until her defeat
in the 1982 race by the Romanians Maricica Puica
and Fita Lovin.
Her fifth title came in
1983 and equalled the record set by Doris Brown
in the pre-IAAF era (1967 to 1971). To prove the
theory that sometimes the best is saved for last,
she claimed that victory was actually the
easiest.
Observers in Gateshead did
not disagree as she put twelve seconds between
herself and the rest of the field after pulling
clear with a kilometre to go.
After adding a bronze medal
to her collection in 1984, the people of Norway
erected a statue to honour her running exploits
outside Oslo’s famous Bislett Stadium.
LYNN
JENNINGS
(USA)
 The American runner from
Massachusetts has rightly gained the reputation
as one of the toughest, most versatile runners
ever.
On the track Jennings has
notched up Olympic and World Indoor medals but
cross country is her true domain.
Between 1986 and 1993 she
competed in every single World Cross Country
Championships. Her first appearance brought her a
silver medal, behind England’s Zola Budd,
followed by two agonising fourth places and a
sixth.
But at Aix-les-Bains in
1990 she gained her first victory after leading
from the gun. Her teenage prediction that she
would be the best runner in the world by the time
she was 30 had been fulfilled.
At the time she put it
memorably: "I wanted to win this race with
every fibre of my body. The only way to survive
in international cross country races is to go out
hard. Today my hard was harder than anyone
else’s."
It continued to be the case
for the next two years which included a memorable
victory in her home city of Boston in 1992.
In 1994, Jennings opted to
concentrate her energies on the track but the 36
year old runner may come back for one last hurrah
in Turin. In December she won a record ninth US
title and she may yet return to the global stage
which she dominated during the early 1990s.
JOHN
NGUGI
(Kenya)
 Although western commentators often
foist the title ‘unknown Kenyan’ on any
winning runner from that country they had not
noticed before, one man really deserved to be
called that: John Ngugi in 1986 when he loped to
victory in the Swiss town of Neuchatel. His only
previous claim to fame had been winning the East
and Central African 1500m title in 1985.
Ngugi’s results before
major championships were highly erratic and every
year there were predictions of his impending
defeat. Yet until he was dethroned by
Morocco’s Khalid Skah in 1990, Ngugi always
managed to dig deep and find something on the
day.
The Kenyan team management
had often agonized over whether to even include
Ngugi in the team, notably in 1987 after he
finished 76th in their national championship and
yet he out-sprinted his compatriot Paul Kipkoech
to win the world crown that year.
In 1989 he romped to a
record fourth consecutive title in freezing and
muddy Norwegian conditions, winning by 38
seconds,
After a two year gap, when
the title passed to Skah, Ngugi was back in
action in Boston to win his fifth title,
something no other man had done.
Ngugi never had the chance
to bow out from the World Cross Country
championships in an appropriate fashion. He
refused to take an out-of-competition drug test
just before the 1993 event and was banned until
May 1995.
Following his early
reinstatement by the IAAF under the
"exceptional circumstances" rule Ngugi
returned to competition and made an attempt to
get fit for last year’s race in Cape Town.
But the two years away from the sport proved too
much. Now 34 it is unlikely Ngugi will climb the
medal podium again.
CARLOS
LOPES
(Portugal)
 Carlos Lopes gave hope to all those
who had expected to hang up their spikes when
they turned 30.
The Portuguese star’s
World Cross Country Championship career spanned
nearly two decades from when he finished 25th out
of 35 runners in the 1966 junior race.
He won his first title in
1976 at the age of 29 and many people assumed
that this would be his summit, although later
that year he won an Olympic 10,000m silver medal.
In 1977 Lopes won a silver
medal behind Belgium’s Leon Schots, but by
the turn of the decade the years seemed to have
caught up with him. At Longchamps in 1980 he
trailed in 26th.
However, he proved that age
is no barrier, by getting back on the podium in
1983 before winning the title again at the age 37
in 1984.
Lopes will be remembered as
the oldest man ever to win the Olympic marathon
gold medal, which he did later that year in Los
Angeles. But his form carried through into 1985
when, in front of a jubilant home crowd in
Lisbon, he became the oldest man to win the World
Cross Country title.
Lopes’ achievement is
still in the record books and it is difficult to
see anyone challenging it in the near future. He
is also, however, the last non-African to win the
senior men’s title a statistic that could
have a slightly shorter life span.
GASTON
ROELANTS
(Belgium)
 Some may wonder why Roelants is
included in the pantheon of World Cross Country
Championship legends as his record during the
IAAF era was rather modest.
The Belgian finished eighth
in 1973, 14th in 1974, 10th in 1975 and 13th in
1976. However, he is included not because of what
he did during these four years but what he
achieved before it.
There have two distinct
eras of the World Cross: the first was when
Europe dominated and the second when the
Championships became truly global. Roelants is
the one legend to have known both.
Roelants’ first race
was in 1959 when, as a 22 year-old, he finished a
modest 27th. The following year, a little older
and wiser, he collected a silver medal and
preceded to win four titles in 1962, 1967, 1969
and finally in 1972, just before the IAAF took
over administration of the event.
His fourth title equalled
the record number of victories of England’s
Jack Holden and France’s Alain Mimoun until
John Ngugi went one better in 1992. In total
Roelants competed in 17 International and World
Cross Country Championships, finishing in the top
ten nine times.
As a track steeplechaser
Roelants was a 1962 European and 1964 Olympic
gold medallist and also set two world records
before turning his attention, with great effect,
to the marathon.
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