In the beginning of the XIX Century, educational institutions from Great Britain organised cross country races for the first time. The first event took place in 1831 at the Shewbury School in Wales and during the next years other races, such as "Barby Hill Run" or "Click Run", came up. Clubs were gradually involved in this movement and on 7th December 1987 the Thames Rowing Club, chaired by Mr. Walter Rye, organised the first event in the distance of 4.454 m (two miles and 3/4) near London. Following the Thames Rowing initiative other clubs appeared, such as Thames Hare or Hounds Club which took part in the first National Country National Championships held on 18th November 1876 in Burckhurt Hill at the Epping Forest, near London. Cross Country became more and more popular in Great Britain and it reached other countries, such as France where the first international race was held on 20th March 1898, with the French and the British teams competing. It was a 14.5 km course whose champion was the British Sydney J. Robinson with 56:36.

   This race had an important effect and the need to host a major cross country Championships soon emerged. The leaders of Wales, Mr. F. Liddington Johns and R.A. Pritchard founded the International Cross Country Union (ICCU) and got in touch with Mr. Fletcher, secretary of the Irish Association. England and Scotland supported this initiative and on 28th March 1903 the first edition of the International Cross Country Championships was staged in the Scottish city of Hamilton. The first winner was Alfred Shrubb, one of the most famous cross country runners in that time, beating his team colleague Tom Edwards and the Irish Jack Daly. The English team was the champion, ahead Ireland and Scotland. In the following years, other countries decided to join this initiative and France competed for the first time in 1907, Belgium did it in 1925 and in 1929 Spain became the seventh participating country. At the same time the cross country started to be included in the Programme of the Olympic Games, being staged in Stockholm 1972, Ambers 1920 and Paris 1924. This last race, which is commonly known as "Colombes' Hell", was held under hard weather conditions, reaching 45C temperature. Most of the runners did not managed to finish the race due to this extreme conditions so the sport authorities decided to delete the cross country from the Olympic programme.

   During almost 70 years of history of the International Cross Country Championships, the supremacy of Europe was mainly total although at the end of the 50's some African teams, such as Tunisia and Morocco, started to compete and they showed their quality with the victories of runners like Rhadi Ben Abdesselem or Mohamed Gammoudi. The transition of the International Cross Country Championships to the World Championships had its beginning at the International Cross Country Union Congress, held in 1971 in San Sebastián. In this Congress the proposal to transfer to the IAAF the organisation of the Championships was approved. So, the last edition was held in the English city of Birmingham in 1972 and the next year the first World Championships were held at the Waregem Hippodrome of Belgium with an amazing duel between the Finnish Pekka Paivarinta and the Spanish Mariano Haro, reaching the victory the Finnish.

Creation of the European Cross Country Championships
   During those first years of the World Championships, the European runners kept their guidelines, but this situation changed in Madrid 1981, with the first participation of the Kenyan and Ethiopian teams which caused a great impact and gradually pushed out the Europeans from the first places. The African presence increased with the participation of athletes from countries such as Morocco (with a long international tradition in the cross country) or Tanzania, pushing into the background the cross country runners from the Old Continent, having as primary focus to be the best European athlete of the competition.

   This fact was what sparked the possibility to create the European Cross Country Championships in order to revitalize the cross country in our continent, and to offer the European athletes new incentives. So in 1991, just after the World Championships held in Amberes, the French newspaper "L'Equipe" together with other international media published this necessity and at the Congress of the European Athletics Association (EAA), held in Prague on 24th October 1992, it was approved the creation of this competition. Several months later, it was decided that the first edition of these championships will be held in Alnwick (Great Britain) on 10th December 1994.

   180 athletes from 23 countries took part in the first edition of the European Cross Country Championships, whose winners were the Portuguese Paulo Guerra and the Irish Catherine McKiernan. The junior category was held for the first time in 1996 as an exhibition competition, the next year they became official and in 2006 the U-23 was included. During these 16 years since its birth, the competition has been consolidated in the international calendar and it is one of the main targets of the best European Cross Country runners. The most outstanding star in the history of this event is the Ukranian Sergiy Lebid, who has been the champion six times (1998, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005), whereas the Portuguese Paulo Guerra has achieved the victory four times (1994, 95, 99 and 2000). Regarding women, the only one who has been the winner more than one time is Paula Radcliffe (1998-2003).