With team titles for the U23 men and women and the U20 men and individual gold medals for Charles Hicks (U23 Men) and Will Barnicoat (U20 Men), it was a superb day for the GB & NI squad overall. The under 23 individual women’s title was taken by home crowd favourite Nadia Battocletti of Italy whilst the under 20’s victory went to Spain’s Maria Forero.
The unstoppable Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen won the senior men’s title at the 2022 SPAR European Cross-Country Championships. The Olympic 1,500m and World 5,000m champion collected a sixth successive European cross-country title, having claimed an unprecedented four at U20 level before his maiden senior success at the 2021 SPAR European Cross-Country Championships in Fingal-Dublin.
Making it a Norwegian double in the main contests of the day, Ingebrigtsen’s compatriot Karoline Bjerkeli Grøvdal retained her SPAR European Cross Country Championships senior women’s title after an exciting battle with Germany’s reigning European 5,000m champion Konstanze Klosterhalfen.
This was the most important cross-country competition in the world in 2022 with 555 competitors comprising 40 teams for the seven races. This strong field of athletes led to the SPAR brand being seen not just across Europe but around the globe.
The Championships were broadcast live across markets in Europe and more widely via the European Athletics livestream, bringing the action to fans around the world. The strong team representing Great Britain & Northern Ireland was strongly supported with a TV audience of a sixty-minute highlight programme being double that of the recorded audience the year before. Also, in the Netherlands, there was a strong following with the competition coverage on the national channel achieving 19.9% share, showing an audience more than double that of the previous year.
The 29th SPAR European Cross-Country Championships will be held in Brussels, Belgium, on 10 December 2023.
Watch the video of the 2022 SPAR European Cross Country Championships.
Source: European Athletics
