World 1500m champion Isaac Nader will race in the mixed relay at the Portuguese Cross Country Championships on Sunday (23) in Lagoa at the Parchal Urban Park, the venue for the 2025 SPAR European Cross Country Championships on 14 December.
The 26-year-old, who won gold in a thrilling 1500m final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, last raced at cross country this February when he was part of Benfica’s mixed relay team that won gold at the ECCC Cross Country on home soil in Albufeira.
Prior to that, his last appearance in the discipline was when he was part of Portugal’s mixed relay team at the 2022 SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Turin.
But he will return to the terrain in Lagoa for what will double up as the test event for the SPAR European Cross Country Championships on 14 December, the fourth time Portugal will have staged the championship.
And he looks set to join forces with his partner Salome Afonso, the double medallist at the 2025 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn this March, for Benfica in the mixed relay this weekend.
This will be just Nader's second race since winning gold in the 1500m at the World Athletics Championships and his first race on Portuguese soil.
Moreira and Machado to defend senior cross country titles
With Nader due to focus on the mixed relay, the leading contenders for the senior men’s 7.47km title will be last year's winner Miguel Moreira, who went on to finish a creditable 13th at the 2024 SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Antalya; and Jose Carlos Pinto, who recently set a Portuguese 10km record of 27:53.
The senior men's race also includes Etson Barros, Samuel Barata and Rui Pinto, all of whom have won the Portuguese cross country title in years gone by.
And there could be some significant international opposition on the start-line as well. The entry-list includes Ethiopia’s Olympic 10,000m silver medallist Berihu Aregawi and 2023 world 1500m bronze medallist Narve Gilje Nordas, the latter a training partner of Pinto, both of whom compete for Portuguese clubs.
The entry-list for the senior women’s 7.47km is led by Mariana Machado who is targeting her fifth successive title at the Portuguese Cross Country Championships.
Machado finished fifth at the 2024 SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Lagoa before improving to fourth in the 10km at the inaugural European Running Championships in Brussels-Leuven in April.
Full entry-lists can be found here.