Home - AUS | NZ | USA | HELP / FAQ / Contact | Calendar | Messages | News | Results | Articles | WebWatch | Clubs

History of NSW State Cross-Country

The Crest at Bass Hill will be the venue for the 100th running of the NSW Men's Cross Country Championships. This historic event, which will take place on Saturday June 7, will be preceded by a 'Parade of Past Winners', which will include three-time Olympian, Albie Thomas, the Manning brothers, who tied for the title in 1964 and the Campbell brothers who won four titles in the '40s and '50s.

Glancing through the list of past champions is like looking through a who's who of NSW distance running over the years. The names of past Olympians include: Albie Thomas, Dave Power, John Farrington, Allan Lawrence and Robert Vagg. In more recent years the Central Coast's Paul Arthur has won three of the last five races, including the last two.

This race has had a number of homes since the first contest at Botany back in 1890. From 1892 up until World War II, the event was mainly run on the metropolitan racecourses. In fact, 23 times it was run on the famous Royal Randwick racecourse. To counteract the flat nature of the track in 1935, the executive of the association decided make things a little more difficult by forcing the runners to clear 24 fences and nine brush jumps.

Since World War II, the race has moved to more suburban locations. Centennial Park was a regular venue up until the late 1960s, while Macquarie University hosted to nine races in the 1970s. From 1980 onwards, the race has been run on some testing courses, initially the tough Lansdowne track and, for the last four years, the mountainous Cambewarra course just outside Nowra.

In 1997, the race returns to the Crest - the site of the 1990 and 1992 races. The Bankstown Sports Club, which has never had an athlete win the event, will be the host. On home turf, this could be the club's year, with Jamie Harrison one of the race favourites. Others expected to vye for the title include: Kim Gillard, Paul Arthur, David Evans and Wayne Larden.

It has only been in the last 20 years that the men's race has lengthened to 12km. In the early days, it was run over 5 miles (8.05km), and in the 1920s, it changed to 10km. It wasn't until 1976 that the distance was changed to coincide with national and international standards.

One of the most memorable races came in 1952 out at Campbelltown when torrential rain changed the normally quiet Fishers Ghost Creek into a 'raging torrent', flowing at head height. The course took runners across the creek four times and was described as "close to being a cross country swimming championship". The '48 and '49 champion, John Plummer, at one point had to save a fellow competitor from being washed down stream.

While there have only been 99 races, there have already been 100 champions. In 1964, in the grounds of Centennial Park, the Manning brothers Peter and Tony dead-heated. Surely that's taking sibling rivalry a little too far. Six years later, Tony took out the Commonwealth steeplechase title in Edinburgh, in the slick time of 8min 26.2sec.

This year's race should be just another chapter in what has been a long and colourful history in this event.

Click here for CoolRunning Homepage