It would be an exaggeration to describe Carsten Jørgensen as a complete unknown but it would still be fair to say that the Dane wasn’t many people’s favourite for the senior men’s title at the 1997 SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Oeiras.
This was the fourth edition of the SPAR European Cross Country Championships and the first time the championships had reached Portuguese soil after previous editions in Alnwick, Great Britain in 1994 and 1995 and Charleroi in 1996.
Jørgensen was an accomplished cross country runner having finished fourth in Charleroi 1996 - one of the muddiest editions to date - but the Dane had turned his sporting focus away from athletics altogether in the ensuing year.
With Lagoa 2025 just over a fortnight away, this is the first of a three-part series looking back at three previous times the SPAR European Cross Country Championships have been held in Portugal.
From orienteering success to cross country gold
While the eyes of the sporting world were on the World Athletics Championships in Athens in 1997, Jørgensen was competing for Denmark at the World Orienteering Championships which were taking place at the same time in Norway. However, Jørgensen didn’t leave empty-handed, taking gold for Denmark in the relay.
And just four months later, Jørgensen struck a surprise individual gold medal at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships, running down Sweden's Claes Nyberg in the long finishing straight with his distinctive forward-leading gait for victory in the senior men’s 9.35km by one second.
In third, a hitherto little-known Serhiy Lebid from Ukraine won bronze, his first of an astonishing 12 individual medals at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships, including an unmatched nine senior gold medals between 1998 and 2010.
There might have been some initial disappointment among the home crowd that Portugal didn’t feature among the individual medals in the senior men’s race but despite the absence of 1994 and 1995 champion Paulo Guerra, hosts Portugal still lifted the team title aloft.
Their team was helmed by Alfredo Fras who finished fifth individually, three places ahead of 1987 world 5000m bronze medallist Domingos Castro - now the President of the Portuguese Athletics Federation - in eighth.
Further down the field, 1992 Olympic 5000m champion Dieter Baumann from Germany faded to 15th in a rare cross country appearance, four places ahead of Italy’s Giuliano Battocletti, the coach and father of Nadia who is aiming for back-to-back senior titles in Lagoa on 14 December.
There was an equally unexpected champion in the senior women’s 5.45km with France’s Josianne Llado pulling clear of a pack of three runners around the halfway mark to win individual gold and lead France to the team title in her first and only appearance at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships.
Llado won by 13 seconds ahead of Romanian veteran Elena Fidatov with a 20-year-old Olivera Jevtic holding off 1995 champion Annemari Sandell for her first of five individual bronze medals at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships.
The top four finished more than half-a-minute ahead of fifth-placer Mariana Stanescu from Romania with Helena Sampaio the best Portuguese finisher in sixth.
First ever U20 champions crowned
Having been staged as exhibition events in Charleroi 1996, the U20 races - or junior races as they were known at the time - were incorporated as fully-fledged medal events for the first time at the 1997 SPAR European Cross Country Championships.
A winner of one of those exhibition races one year prior, Gert-Jan Liefers had the distinction of becoming the first ever official men’s U20 champion, winning the 5.45km race in 15:45. He also remained the only Dutch winner of an U20 title in championship history before Niels Laros followed suit in a sprint finish in Antalya last year.
Liefers went on to have a highly respectable career in the senior ranks, the highlight being an eighth-place finish in the 1500m final at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. His lifetime best of 3:32.89 also stood as a Dutch record between 2001 and 2023 when Laros took ownership of the record.
The path to parity in the distances contested by men and women at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships took a long time to reach fruition. In fact, the 2024 edition in Antalya was the very first edition where distances were standardised for men and women across the three age-groups.
In stark contrast to the men’s U20 race in 1997 which was held over 5.45km, the women’s U20 race was a comparative sprint at just 2.85km.
The first ever women’s U20 champion was Sonja Stolic who won gold for Yugoslavia - and silver in the team race behind Germany - in 9:09 ahead of Portugal’s Monica Rosa who won the host nation’s only individual medal of the championships with silver in 9:15.
Stolic went on to compete in 13 editions of the SPAR European Cross Country Championships between 1997 and 2015 with her best appearance as a senior being a sixth-place finish in 2002.
Full results here.