Petition to rename the sport of Cross Country

And yet the most popular sport in your country you call football; a sport in which you barely touch the ball with your feet.

Cross-country tells you what the sport entails as much as basketball (does that involve catching a tennis ball with a picnic basket?), and certainly as much as "football" (ah yes, "the world game", Messi is the GOAT).

"Cross-country" involves going across the country side; ideally as fast as you can under your own steam. You don't go around it, as you would if you followed a road, you go straight across it. It seems like the name gets you most of the way there.

Most people usually just say "cross-country running" anyway (at least they do in Australia), to clear up any confusion that dimwits might confront.

I say we call it "Doge X"

classic running would fit better

Man Racing

End of thread

In the late 19th & early 20th century, walking/running contests (off track) were frequently called pedestrianism. Let's go with that!

here is what others think of cross country:

At least it would have running in the name and that would be a good start.

As a young punk kid in the mid 70s living in BFE Michigan, I never understood our old gym teacher calling me a " harrier" ! XC was a way better name.

Hobby Running

Just call it what it is:

“A bunch of skinny dweebs running around in the park”

geez that’s horrible lol

Sometimes re-naming does not work very well

Back in 1970 in the provincial legislature in BC, Canada, an elected representative tried to replace the word sex, with what she thought was a better word.

As the paisley-patterned ’60s cast their swinging spell upon the world, the B.C. Social Credit party stood ready to repel the sexual revolutionaries at the gates.

Their shock troops were the Socred Women’s Auxiliary, the bedrock of the party and a perennial source of cheap laughs for the big-city media. Urban sophisticates might chuckle when WA members demanded the government circumcise rapists, but the party faithful knew what the ladies were talking about.
But no one knew what Socred backbencher Agnes Kripps was talking about on Feb. 19, 1970, when she rose in the house to say she hated sex.
Not the act, as it turned out, but the word: “That nasty little three-letter word,” she said, “carries with it a stigma and a distorted connotation. That word, Mr. Speaker, can have 100 different meanings to 100 different people, and while we all spell it the same way, there the similarity ends.”

After a quick dip onto the Oxford Dictionary for the etymology of the term, Kripps revealed that “today, sex is still a confused word.”
As honourable members snickered, she ploughed on: “Because so many shades of meaning have been written into the word, I have come to hate it, and I propose” -- more laughter from MLAs threw her off for a second here -- “I hate the word sex, and I propose that we throw it out of the vocabulary of education.
“Let’s find a substitute and start all over again.”
As elected representatives chorused “No! No!” Kripps confided, “Mr. Speaker, I didn’t know I was going to be the one blushing.”

She then offered a substitute.
“Let’s call it... listen carefully now, let’s call it, for example, BOLT. That stands for... Biology on Life Today: B-O-L-T.”
As MLAs collapsed in mirth, Kripps explained that BOLT was “just an example. You may have other words that you would like to use.”
Added Kripps: “By eliminating the word sex and replacing it with BOLT or any other word -- any other word -- we will remove the blindfolds, the smirks, the embarrassment and, above all, the ignorance.”
“Call it Social Credit,” smirked one member.
As the house dissolved into hysterics, Kripps called on the Speaker to restore order: “Mr. Speaker, would you please break your gavel. Thank you.” (That’s the official Hansard version. Other accounts insist she said: “Mr. Speaker, won’t you please bang that thing of yours on the table?”)
It was left to the next speaker, Socred MLA Herb Capozzi, to wrap things up. “On behalf of all of us,” he said, “I would certainly welcome you, Mr. Speaker, to our bolt new world and I will certainly say that, if nothing else, she had everyone bolt upright in their chairs.”
Sadly, Kripps’s recommendation would go unheeded. BOLT, it seems, wasn’t better than sex.

If you are in the USA grass track, in the rest of the world cross country

Cross Country makes sense in Europe as its not flat like the US.

There hills, proper muck, rivers etc to go throug

But even in other countries does that terminology make sense and you automatically know it's running? Countryside Running or many other things would tell people new to the sport much more information.

You could possibly find a shorter version of that if you translate it into classical Latin.

Nothing wrong with cross country

the only name is stupid is American Football

retard name for a retard sport that gives people brain damage (CTE)

f*ck football