Seychellois long-distance runner, Yannick Magnan, will leave Seychelles on Wednesday for Belgrade, Serbia, to compete in the World Athletics Cross Country Championship.

This will be Magnan's second international outing over a month after finishing 34th at the 6th African Cross Country Championships in Hammamet, Tunisia on February 25.

In the senior 10km race, Magnan clocked 36 minutes and 08.64 seconds to finish 34th out of 36 contestants.

Magnan has participated in several international competitions including the junior championship in March 2015 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

In Serbia, the 27-year-old will be competing against the world's best in cross-country running, and the competition will have the participation of 485 athletes from 51 teams around the globe.

In the senior individual races, there are entries for 245 athletes, comprising 138 men and 107 women.

The U20 races will see 187 athletes participate, with a gender distribution of 95 men and 92 women. Additionally, 12 countries are slated to compete in the mixed relay event.

At the previous World Athletics Cross Country Championships in Bathurst, Australia, in 2023, Kenya emerged as the leading nation on the medal tally, securing six gold medals.

The championship was originally set to take place in Croatia, but was re-scheduled after the World Athletics Council decided that preparations at Medulin and Pula in Croatia to host the event on February 10 had "not advanced sufficiently".

This will be the second World Athletics Series to be hosted by Belgrade in the space of two years following the 2022 World Athletics Indoor Championships.

The 2024 World Cross Country Championships will be held in the Park of Friendship, next to the Danube River in the heart of Belgrade, which was the venue for the 2013 European Championships.