English XC Champs called off due to weather - I don't want to hear a peep from Brits saying US XC is soft

*English Championships. Scottish Championships are going ahead tomorrow without a hitch.

Absolute. Fvcking. Wimps.

There's got to be more to the story than just a muddy parking lot.

We used to be a proper country, smh.

Seriously: there is no way to get athletes to the venue if the car parks are out of commission. They looked into a park and ride system but couldn't get it to work at short notice. It will be re-scheduled

if the car parks are grass areas then this is an oversight on behalf of the organisers. they should have found a venue with a concrete carpark, or used the current venue and spread a load of gravel or woodchips on the area.

Who are? The runners?

The parking area was underwater. I'm not sure exactly what could have been done.

Note: This is (and I have 1st hand experience) a common reason US XC (at least HS and lower) races are canceled as well. Parking at many venues is on grass.

So yes, Brits, Euros etc, anyone really calling us soft over here...please remember this incident.

this coming from a country who just moved their Marathon trials because everyone complained so much about the weather

The athletes still want to run, it isn't about the course conditions, it's purely logistical about parking

That’s three races (for us) this XC season.

Parliament Hill Youth Games, Oxford intercounties and now the National XC.

We’ve lost our hotel deposit!

I just really feel for the young runners, especially those who are racing in the top year of their age category.

Rain in England should not be a surprise.

It's Britain. It should be cancelled if it's not raining.

how difficult would it really have been to get everybody to park a few km away on the nearest suitable site and then have a few pick-up trucks ferrying everybody to and fro. or even use the first aid vehicles that would have been waiting on site ready. many people could have simply walked.

probably somebody in a suit somewhere wanted a proper bus and a health and safety assessment written up.

Just for context, if you've never seen the English National XC results... last year there were 1,473 finishers in the senior men's race alone. And with all the age groups, there are ten different races. In terms of the scale of the event, this is nothing like any cross-country meet that has ever been staged, at any point in history, in North America. A few pick-up trucks are not going to cut it.

https://www.englishcrosscountry.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/NXC23_SeniorM.pdf

Very, I suspect.

I was running the senior men and that was nearly 2000. My lad’s race had close to 400. There’s no way they could have organised that at short notice. Plus, I still suspect people will be arriving throughout tomorrow, unaware of the cancellation. It would have been carnage.

The access was poor at last year’s race.

They just need to pick suitable venues.

why? 1473 is 147 trips of 10 people. you could do that in 1-2 hours with 20 pick-up trucks/vans. and that's assuming nobody is happy walking. if it's only a few km to walk many if not most would be fine walking.

poofter toffs, the whole bloody country

It's not 1473 that's just the senior men's race, the total is probably triple that with all the women's and junior races. It's also spread through out the day - the first runners get there at about 10am to warm up and the last runners of the last race are probably still there at 5pm

Here is an article on the 'postponement.'

englandathletics.org

ECCA English National Cross Country Championships postponed - England Athletics

mfoster

Our partners at the English Cross Country Association (ECCA) have taken the difficult decision postpone tomorrow's planned National Cross Country Championships at Weston Park in Shropshire.

Open link

I've changed the title of the thread to reflect it's the English XC champs - not the British champs. Let's don't pin this on all of the British people - just the English.

I guess it's appropriate, right? I'm not an expert of British culture but aren't the English the ones who think they are much more sophisticated than the Scots and Welsh? I can see why they don't want to get muddy - that's very working class :)

I write that previous paragraph somewhat in gest, but can someone in the know confirm to me that the English look down upon the Scots and Welsh way more than a Northeastern elite looks down upon a Southerner in the US?

Everyone who supports the decision.

Water! Waaaaaahhhhhhh!! 😭

R U EFFING KIDDING ME

The sheet volume of rain is a surprise. We're coming off the wettest winter on record, everywhere is just saturated. We get one downpour and streets get flooded, storm drains overflow. I have regular running routes across fields that I would normally have been running for at least a month by now. But at the moment, they're impassable because they're so saturated that there's still standing water.