From the Great Edinburgh Cross Country to the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix, Britain has lost an alarming number of major events in recent years.
It is now eight years since the last Great Edinburgh Cross Country International and its absence from Britain’s Winter Games roster is still sore. Sterling’s attempts to keep it going in 2019 have been admirable, but finally condemned. The 2020 pandemic then snuffed out any chance of a revival.
The meet at picturesque Holyrood Park was regularly broadcast live on the BBC early in the new year, with competitors including Elud Kipchoge, Kenenisa Bekele, Laura Muir and Mo Farah, although the King of Holyrood was undoubtedly multiple winner Gareth Heath of the United States.
Rewind to a few years ago when the Great North Cross Country International was held in the North East of England and Paula Radcliffe was a regular and met competitors such as Goethe Wami and Zola Peters. In the 1990s it was even occasionally held between Christmas and New Year, once again being televised on the BBC.
Current races such as Ribble Valley 10km and: Friday night under the lights 5 km Battersea have done their best in recent days to provide a good race over the Christmas period, but they don’t have the big names and television interest that the Great Edinburgh event had.
Of course, the sports landscape is always changing. In 2026, we now have the World Cross Country Champs on January 10th instead of its traditional late March date, and road runners are flocking to Valencia is looking for a fast 10km this weekend.
However, it is quite clear that the number of major athletics events in Great Britain has declined alarmingly in recent years.
It’s not just cross country. Birmingham’s annual Grand Prix used to be described as the ‘closed-season Weltklasse’ with good reason due to its world-class fields. In 2025, its mid-February date on the calendar was effectively taken over by the Keely Klassic, a promising event that unfortunately is not happening this year.
There was also a recent indoor game in Glasgow at the end of January which was televised by the BBC. An international meet will still take place this month at the end of January, but it’s an “EAP” meet with few big name athletes and little media interest.
If you go back to the sport’s heyday, the 1985 season saw the BBC cover four closed matches at the start of the year before ITV took over coverage of the sport in Britain. ITV subsequently showed 20 British events for the rest of that year. It would have been more, too, had it not been for the apartheid demonstration in Edinburgh and the technicians’ strike.
READ MORE. 2026 Athletics Games Calendar
Looking at the outdoor circuit, Britain has also sadly lost its CityGames events since the pandemic. These popular matches took place in Manchester, Newcastle-Gateshead and Stockton.
London even hosted a street athletics meeting at Horse Guards Parade in 2014, although encouragingly there is now talk of reviving a pole vaulting competition in central London this summer, possibly on Oxford Street on the same weekend as the London Diamond League.
Let’s hope it does, as British Athletics can certainly do with more, not less, televised events in the coming years.
Snow and ice cause Christmas cancellations
It’s only a few days into 2026 and once again we’re wondering if? Sport in the UK is plagued by a ‘cancellation culture’.
More than 100 events were postponed due to icy weather on the first parkrun weekend of the year. Fortunately, more cross-country races have been run thus far, despite Loughborough trainer George Gundy’s famous comment that “cancellation should not be part of a cross-country runner’s vocabulary”.
You can expect more cancellations in the coming days, however, if the cold weather continues.
I usually start the new year with the Brown Willy Run on Bodmin Moor, which takes runners to the top of Cornwall’s highest point and back to finish at the historic (and obviously haunted) Jamaica Inn.
Twelve months ago this seven-mile run (like parkrun, it refuses to call itself a race) was canceled due to bad weather. This year, thankfully, it has continued, but I experience more and more “health and safety” concerns every year.
In 2026, the event was banned for under-16s. This follows a decision banning dogs from running with their owners. Maybe it’s my imagination, but there are also a lot more mountain rescue volunteers than I remember 10-20 years ago.
What would Alf Tupper make of it all?
Failed athletics face to face
How long will it be before we see more underwhelming athletics contests that could, dare we say, be inspired by the Nick Kyrgios-Aryna Sabalenka tennis “battle of the sexes” or the Anthony Joshua-Jake Paul boxing mismatch last month?
We’ve already seen it Karsten Warholm takes on Mondo Duplantis over 100 meters in Zurich – and it was well received to be fair.
What other clashes might we see? And will someone have the imagination and energy to bring them to sport in 2026?
As the tennis and boxing examples above remind us, however, there is a fine line between entertainment and farce.
