World Cross Country Championships LIVE Preview: Top Contenders, Key Athletes To Watch & Team USA's Medal Chances
The CITIUS MAG Podcast | A Running + Track and Field Show
CITIUS MAG
4.9 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The World XC Championships return to the U.S. for the first time since 1992, with Saturday’s races in Tallahassee offering a chance to reignite global attention on the best distance runners in the world.
How to watch: The races will be broadcast on Peacock (starting at 9:35 a.m.) and will be televised on CNBC (starting at 10 a.m. ET).
Schedule (All times ET):
- 9:45 a.m. – Mixed 4x2K Relay
- 10:20 a.m. – Women’s U20 6K Race
- 10:55 a.m. – Men’s U20 8K Race
- 11:35 a.m. – Women’s Senior 10K Race
- 12:20 p.m. – Men’s Senior 10K Race
You can read our full race preview here.
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Mixed Relay Preview:
Favorites: Kenya w/ Reynold Cheruiyot
Challengers:
- Australia (Jessica Hull, Olli Hoare)
- France (Agathe Guillemot)
- USA (Sage Hurta-Klecker, Ethan Strand)
- Morocco's NCAA stars
- Kenya has won 3 of 4 editions since 2017.
Senior Women’s Race:
Star Power Dip: No Beatrice Chebet (pregnancy), no Olympic or World medalists from 5000m/10,000m entered.
Top Teams:
- Kenya: Agnes Ngetich leads (14:01/28:46 PBs); Maurine Chebor debuts
- Ethiopia: Loaded with U20 grads like Senayet Getachew, Asayech Ayichew
- Uganda: Joy Cheptoyek, Sarah & Rebecca Chelangat return
- USA: Led by Weini Kelati; Schweizer, Kurgat, Izzo in the mix
- Wild cards: Megan Keith, Lauren Ryan
Senior Men’s Race:
Deepest Field Post-COVID: 145 entrants
Title contenders:
- Jacob Kiplimo: Two-time champ, fresh off 2:02:23 marathon win
- Ethiopia: Berihu Aregawi + rising star Biniam Mehary
- Kenya: Daniel Ebenyo returns; Weldon Langat, Robert Koech support
- France: Jimmy Gressier headlines strong squad
Team USA Outlook:
- Potential for medal with Graham Blanks, Nico Young, Parker Wolfe, Rocky Hansen
- U.S. last medaled in 2013 (silver)
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Transcript
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| 0:33.8 | Good morning and welcome to Tallahassee. |
| 0:49.3 | Chris Chavez here with Aisha Pratlier and Eric Jenkins coming to you live from the 2026 World Cross Country Championships for our city smag live at World's pre-show presented by A6. They've got us in this awesome space that is literally basically right on the course. Right on the course. And in addition to that, the press conference is about to start about 10 feet away from us. So if at some point in this, we lower our voices a little bit, it's so that we're not distracting from the traditional media over there, asking questions to President Sebko. |
| 1:05.9 | And they've got Paltur got in the house. |
| 1:08.2 | I was on his flight. |
| 1:09.4 | You were on his flight. |
| 1:10.3 | Who else was on your flight? Paul Turgat, the whole South Africa team. And honestly, that's about it. Yeah. Good flight nonetheless. Eric, I guess we're here in Tallahassee. This is a place that you used to come for winter training blocks, right? Yeah, yeah, I've done a few camps here. |
| 1:28.3 | I love it. |
| 1:29.1 | It's a great, I mean, at this time of the year, it's perfect weather, right? |
| 1:32.6 | It's like 70, sunny, great soft services, really nice trails, as much fast food as you |
| 1:40.1 | could possibly desire. |
| 1:41.4 | I always enjoyed my time here for training, yeah. But neither of you have ever raced on this cross-country course, right? Never raced on this cross-country course. Driving in, it's gorgeous. There are all these beautiful trees. There's a lake as we're entering. And I can't wait to get out there tomorrow. Yeah. We're going to do a little bit of a course walk through after this. |
| 2:02.0 | Eric and I are going to get our A6 super blasts all dirty while we're out there trying |
| 2:07.8 | to see the new additions that they have because they've tried to, you know, kind of pay homage |
| 2:12.5 | to some of like the Florida coastline, the Everglades, the theme parks are honored by like this hill that they've built on the course. |
... |
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