Crossing countries not in cross country’s best interests

Chancers can come at you from any direction these days, and especially if you can’t read the signs. Look how close Thamsanqa Jantjie came to fooling everyone except the very hard of hearing at the Nelson Mandela memorial this week – and even Barack Obama would have to admit that.

That’s not saying we aren’t all prone to the occasional moment of hallucination. It almost felt as if my eyes were deceiving me in Belgrade last Sunday afternoon, when not just one but three of the European Cross Country titles went to runners of distinctly East African cadence and gait. This wasn’t entirely unexpected, and still it wasn’t making any sense.

It wasn’t just that the senior men’s winner Alemayehu Bezabeh, formerly of Ethiopia, is now running for Spain, or that he looked amazingly fit despite returning from a two-year doping ban. Nor was it just Sifan Hassan, another former Ethiopian, winning the women’s under-23 race while running in Dutch colours. Nor indeed was it just two former Kenyans running away with the junior men’s race, won in the end by Ali Kaya, now representing Turkey, from Isaac Kimeli, now representing Belgium.

It was more the strange apathy with which it was greeted – as if everyone had been fooled into thinking this wasn’t damaging both the interest and profile of cross country running. Couldn’t they at least read the signs?

Dubious links
There will always be legitimate reasons for athletes to switch allegiance, but watch the official race interview with Ali Kaya from Belgrade on YouTube and make up your own mind. His repeated references to training in Kenya certainly underlined his dubious links with Turkey, but this is the young man born and raised Stephen Kiprotich, who changed his name to Kaya only last June, after getting a Turkish passport a mere year after first "moving" there.

Not that everyone was strangely apathetic to this. Our own David McCarthy told me, after finishing 18th in the senior men’s race: “You come to the European Championships, you see Africans winning it . . . We’ve nothing against them. But for me, cross country is all about running with your countrymen. The team spirit we have is always a big part of coming to this event.”

That might sound a little romantic or idealistic but it is part of the point: if the Irish rugby team showed up at the Aviva Stadium next February to discover that the Scottish team suddenly included first cousins of Ma’a Nonu and Israel Folau they mightn’t be so apathetic about it; likewise if Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane discovered the Serbian team coming here next March included close relatives of Luis Suárez and Sergio Agüero.

But that won’t happen for the simple reason the rules won’t allow it – unlike in athletics, where the rules practically encourage it. The IRB have very simple eligibility criteria in that no player can represent a country unless a) he was born there; b) one parent or grandparent was born there; or c) he completes three years continuous residence there immediately preceding the time of playing.

All this is underlined by the condition that no player can switch allegiance once they’ve played senior or A-level for that country.

This, by the way, explains why South African born Richardt Strauss, never capped at senior level by the Springboks, is now playing for Ireland, where he’s been residing since 2009, as part of the Leinster squad.

Fifa used to be a little softer on the eligibility issue, but in 2008, after Sepp Blatter himself admitted “if we don’t stop this farce, at the 2018 World Cup, out of 32 teams you will have 16 full of Brazilian players”, they extended their residency requirement from two to five years, and only after the player looking to switch allegiance was over 18. There is still the old “granny” rule, and given the age players are now being recruited at club level the issue might resurface again , but at least Fifa aren’t making fools of anyone anymore.

Eligibility criteria
The IAAF, however, last year amended their eligibility criteria, so that along with the standard birth/parent/grandparent rule, athletes can switch allegiance after just one year, provided they haven't represented another country, and once there is agreement from both countries concerned: this period can also be reduced or cancelled "in exceptional cases", provided written notice is given 30 days before the international competition in question.

There was a glaring example of this last year when Ilham Tanui Özbilen, the Kenyan distance running artist formerly known as William Tanui, had his Turkish passport fast-tracked after only nine months, just in time for the IAAF World Indoor Championships, not coincidentally staged in Istanbul – and where he won the silver medal over 1,500m.

It’s perfectly obvious, given their conveyor belt of distance running talent, why Kenya and Ethiopia have no problem bidding adieu to some of their athletes, and it’s obvious too that the countries they’re going to are offering at least some financial incentive. But this should be the exception, not the rule.

Instead, it seems for every Mo Farah – born in Somalia, but moving to Britain as an eight-year old – there are now countless East African runners willing to chance their luck in any country willing to fast-track a passport.

Which is why the IAAF need to stop fooling themselves. Last Monday, on the back of the European Cross Country, they staged a Global Cross Country Seminar in Belgrade, in the hope of dreaming up some way of restoring some level playing field to the sport. They’ve already made the decision to only stage the World Cross Country every two years (the next one being 2015), and are now suggesting cross country might be introduced as a Winter Olympic event.

Chances are it may be too late to restore the sport to its former glory but not too late stop the chancers from running from one country to another without even knowing the difference of where they’ve come from and where they’re going.