College running in europe/asia/south america?

intewested as well

Not to the scale of the NCAA if at all. University Running Clubs would be more prevalent I believe

In other countries, college is for getting an education.

i want a serious answer. not that idiotic tripe you have provided me with.

ohia wrote:

i want a serious answer. not that idiotic tripe you have provided me with.

Really? Using "tard" in your original post negated any seriuosness in your question.

listen weimaraner, i just wanna know.

It depends. Here in Portugal I am almost sure that the universities where you study sports are the only ones that provide you some "in-college" sports clubs.

But the rest, you have to practise whatever sport you want by yourself, and your college only provides you with one competition (in the case of running ), which qualifies you to the college national cross country championship that selects the team for the world championship. That's it by here.

Every college champion we have, don't train in the college, but in some running club.

Here's how it works in the UK (or at least did when I was a student..)

Most universities have clubs in most sports, including track, but they are organised by the students themselves. They elect a president, track captain, secretary etc and organise it all. You have to pay your subscriptions to compete (maybe $20 per year). If they are lucky they get a bit of money from the University, and don't have to pay to use the track, so they can just about cover the costs of getting to meets. If they are even luckier they will have a part time coach who is local and coaches for the love of the sport; but very often they just try tto figure it out themselves, and promptly repeat all the mistakes that caused Wejo to 'suck in college'! If they get injured, they have to find the money for treatment themselves. It's rare to find salaried administrators and a full coaching staff ddedicated to one sport. There are no track scholarships.

They may well share facilities and training sessions with the local town athletic (i.e. track and field) club; the club system is where the real coaching skills lie. Postgrads are allowed to compete too.

There are a handful of universities with a big emphasis on sports science courses and sports management, which do much better. Loughborough and Birmingham are the famous ones. Loughborough hosts the UK national track and field training centre so they have world class facilities and the national coaches right there, and many even better non-University athletes to train with. Getting into Loughborough is very challenging these days, as every reasonably smart sportsperson in the country seems to apply, and many courses get a lot of applicants, so the academic standard is pretty high.

A good athlete at university in Britain is highly likely to remain in close contact with their home club and coach (or, if they didn't have one, to wise up and seek out someone); and will compete for their club and in county/regional/national competitions even while at Uni.

There is a British University Sports Association which organises championships in Cross Country and Track and Field, but it doesn't attract any of the attention college sport does in the USA. After all, half the talented 18-22 year olds aren't even at a university, and the best university athletes will be in the same county and regional races as non-students.

Oxford and Cambridge are a little bit weird because they have an illustrious history in the track and field (they invented it in the modern era) and seem to attract a disproportionate number of good runners - not as many as Loughborough.

So, as an earlier poster said, you go there to study, and track & field is one of many 'amateur' hobbies.

Men's university distance running in Japan's Kanto region is at a higher level than the NCAA. More, better runners. Google the Hakone Ekiden or the Ageo City Half Marathon.

By the way, I used to live in Japan.

College sport there is a lot more like the US. If you're good at a sport you can go to a university that takes it seriously, and be on the team for 3-4 years.

Then, you can probably go into a company which has a team, and get proper support for another 5-10 years while still having a job and getting into a career. Good system.

I'm pretty sure some of the Ivy League track teams occasionally travel to the UK to participate in friendly competition with universities such as Oxbridge. I recall reading an account by a UPenn student fairly recently recounting such a trip. An old time Harvard miler told me they used to go over every 2 years to run against either Oxford or Cambridge, can't recall which.

I had the same question about high school sports in other parts of the world. Just in the English speaking countries?