Ethiopian absence at World Cross in Tallahassee is tip of the iceberg

Visa problems have decimated the Ethiopian team for this weekend’s global championships but most of Europe continues to quietly boycott this once proud event.

The Ethiopian squad at the World Cross Country Championships in Tallahassee, Florida, on Saturday (Jan 10) has been hit by multiple visa rejections. But when it comes to no-shows it is the tip of the iceberg with most of Europe once again quietly boycotting the global event.

Letsrun.com revealed this week that the United States has rejected 14 athlete visa applications from Ethiopia. It has mainly affected the under-20 teams but officials, coaches, senior athletes and relay runners from the east African nation also had problems despite the organisers being well aware of likely issues.

Yet Ethiopia aside, the number of countries missing from the event is alarming.

The list of no-shows in Tallahassee includes Italy, Germany, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Austria, Czechia, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Ukraine, Turkey and Switzerland – to name just a few.

In addition, Belgium has only one runner (in the under-20 men’s race) while Netherlands also has just one athlete (senior women’s race).

Denmark and Serbia have hosted the event in recent years, too, but are not supporting the 2026 championships.

All of which is a shame because Tallahassee promises to serve up an interesting and challenging course with a good atmosphere and global medals at stake.

World Athletics was hoping a new date early in the new year, compared to the traditional late March date, would sidestep the indoor and road running seasons and entice more athletes to compete. But the plan has fallen flat on its face in the mud.

As well as entire teams missing, a number of the world’s leading star names won’t be there. From Beatrice Chebet of Kenya to Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway, the list of absentees is painful.

This weekend a number of top athletes are instead racing on the roads at the Valencia 10km. These include Brits such as Abbie Donnelly, who finished an excellent 20th at the last World Cross in Belgrade in 2024, plus Scott Beattie, who was a fine fourth in last month’s Euro Cross.

However, Britain has a sizeable squad in Tallahassee and remains one of the best supporters of the event along with World Cross regulars such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada and Spain.

The last World Cross in Belgrade less than two years ago was similar, with most of Europe quietly boycotting the championships.

“We’ve got work to do,” World Athletics president Seb Coe said. “I’d like to see more European nations travelling to these championships. Cross country, properly used in the modern training regimen, is an ageless and timeless concept.”

However, in our championships wrap-up coverage, we said: “Will Tallahassee in two years’ time be any different? Don’t hold your breath.”

The irony is that if more European runners had targeted Tallahassee then they might have found it easier to place higher due to the Ethiopian absence.

Three-time European champion Innes FitzGerald, for example, could have been eyeing up a podium place potentially given the fact that Ethiopia will not be able to field a full team, although hindsight is wonderful and the British runner is known to dislike long haul flights.

So far it is unclear as to why the Ethiopian visas were rejected. There is however a history of Ethiopian athletes becoming asylum seekers after arriving at international championships.

In the 1990s, for instance, Birhan Dagne ran for Ethiopia at the World Cross in Durham but then fled to London to apply for asylum. She was successful, too, later racing for Britain and Belgrave Harriers.

More recently, Ethiopian asylum seekers such as Seyfu Jamaal and Omar Ahmed have raced on the British roads.

In the United States, Feyisa Lilesa won Olympic marathon silver behind Eliud Kipchoge in Rio in 2016 – famously making a political statement as he crossed the line – and attempted to stay in the United States after the Games but eventually returned home.