West Midlands University runners made up a quarter of the British team at the European Cross Country Championships and won nine medals, including three individual podium finishes.
Yet again, British runners were crowned kings and queens of Europe as they took to Turkish soil at the weekend, with Nadia Battokletti and Jakob Ingebrigtsen winning the battle for the senior blue ribbon, but Britain winning the overall war with six golds and 12 medals overall.
Not that you’d know it from reading the national papers on Monday, they’ve been acting as if running doesn’t exist as a sport for several years now. In comparison, imagine how much coverage the footballers will enjoy if they win the European Championship.
Hopefully, at least the Birmingham Post and Birmingham Mail will give the Brits some column space for their success at Euro Cross.After all, a quarter of the team for the event in Antalya was made up of the University of Birmingham, with its thriving endurance program running the track. former international Luke Gunn.
Birmingham students won a total of nine medals, with Will Barnicoat, Jess Bailey and David Stone winning individual gold, silver and bronze respectively.As the university rightly boasted on social media: “If UoB were a country we would be second in the medals table behind only GB and NI with our nine medals.”
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Indeed, it brings back memories of when Aldershot, Farnham and the county were magnificent under Mick Woods, the days of Emelia Gorecka, Steph Towell, Charlie Pardew, Lily Partridge and others. During the Euro Cross held in Slovenia in 2011, we reported: “If Aldershot, Farnham and County were included as a single country in the last seven games of the European Cross Country Championships, they would top the overall medal table when it came to; medals won in individual competitions”.
The following year, at a bitterly cold Hungarian event, again dominated by the British, I reported: “It was a further victory for Mick Woods’ People’s Republic. If Aldershot’s coach was a national country, his athletes would have topped the medal table in recent years and Jess Coulson (Piasecki) was just one of his successes in Budapest, with others including under-20 silver medalist Emelia Goretzka.
Jess Coulson (Mark Shearman)
Loughborough University has always been “the place to go” for budding athletes. However, there are other good options for up-and-coming athletes. Innes Fitzgerald, for example, is clearly thriving in his first term at Exeter University.
Don’t forget the American collegiate side either, with Antalya U23 women’s champion Phoebe Anderson, plus U20 men’s runner-up George Coote both doing well on the NCAA circuit.
READ MORE. Euro Cross 2024 coverage
For British endurance runners who prefer to live and train at home, however, the University of Birmingham, as the Antalya results showed, is now clearly the No.1 university.
To read our coverage of any European Championship since its inception in 1994, visit our Digital archive of back issues here.
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