Up the hill: Lloyd Park tomorrow stages the 2025 Surrey Cross-country Championships, with more than 900 entries from around the county
Croydon tomorrow stages what promises to be one of the highest quality sports events in south London in all 2025, as the Surrey County Cross-country Championships are staged over Lloyd Park’s rolling hills and boggy valleys.
More than 900 runners have entered, across 10 races of between two and seven-and-a-half miles, starting with the under-13s at 10.30am, and culminating in the senior women’s race at 12.30pm and the men’s race at 1.30pm. The start and finish zone is not far from the Lloyd Park tram stop, though the best views of the racing for spectators are to be found further up the course, up hill by the intersection near the woods.
Past winners of the Surrey cross-country title have included Olympic medallists and world record-holders, and tomorrow’s entries include a smattering of recent national title-winners and even the possibility of a newly crowned European champion.
Champion performance: Dom Nolan (No700) winning the Surrey title in Lloyd Park in 2023
As in so many sporting spheres, Surrey has a strong and prestigious record in distance running, especially cross-country, which is why tomorrow’s races will be so hard-fought, the victories so cherished.
This is sport at its most basic and primeval, as it is the runners against each other, the hills and the mud, and against themselves. And while cross-country racing traces its history to the 19th Century, Surrey’s annual championships go back just over 100 years, to the first running at Epsom Downs in 1922. Women’s races were added 12 years later.
In the first 23 years of this century, the switchback circuit around Lloyd Park has staged the Surreys 16 times. It is a spectator-friendly course, where it is possible to catch sight of the runners at least twice on each circuit.
Past Surrey title-winners have included Gordon Pirie, the South London Harrier who won Olympic 5,000metres silver in 1956, and was a four-time Surrey champion in the 1950s, through the likes of Aldershot’s Bernie Ford and Hercules Wimbledon’s Dave Clarke, a multiple winner of the National Cross-country title.
Try not to get bogged down: this week’s heavy rainfall could see parts of Lloyd Park turned into very testing going
On the women’s side, Shireen Bailey (ex-Croydon Harrier) won at Happy Valley in 1988 before going on later that year to make the Olympic 800metres final. The last “big names” to win the Surrey men’s title were probably John Gladwin in 1986, the year that the Belgrave Harrier won 1,500m silver at the Commonwealth Games behind Steve Cram, or his clubmate, Gary Staines, the European 5,000m silver medallist, who took the Surrey XC title in 1996.
Last year at Denbie’s Vineyard in Dorking, Aldershot’s 36-year-old veteran Georgie Bruinvels won her fifth Surrey title, her first having come in 2012.
Puff-puff: Culsdon’s Gordon Pirie, seen here winning the 1955 National, was a four-time Surrey Cross-country champion
In 2023, when the Surreys were last staged in Lloyd Park, it saw a famous win for Croydon Harrier Dominic Nolan, the club’s first men’s individual gold in the event for 25 years.
Every race includes a team event, and it is here where much local pride is at stake – six to score in the senior men, only four in the women’s: finishing positions are added together, with the lowest score winning.
Entries for the day’s first race include Ivan Derian, Thomas Hennigan and Max Harrison, who together for Hercules Wimbledon won the silver medals at the National Road Relays last October.
Caspian Holmes, Leau Roch and Tommy Clerkin won the under-15s boys’ silver medals for Herne Hill Harriers at the at the National Cross-country Relay Championships in November, and that trio are listed among tomorrow’s entries at Lloyd Park.
Aldershot Farnham and District are expected to dominate the girls’ under-15 race, with Matilda Robertson, Poppy Guest and Kitty Scott – their National Road Relays champion trio.
In the senior men’s race, the man to beat looks likely to be last year’s silver medallist Jack Kavanagh, of Holland Sports, although the entry list also includes defending champion Joseph O’Connell and 2022 winner Sam Eglen, both of Aldershot.
Other former champions entered are veterans Nick Torry, now running for Kent AC, and record-setting six-time winner Phil Wicks of Belgrave.
The men’s team title looks likely to be a tussle between Belgrave, Aldershot and last year’s bronze medallists, Hercules Wimbledon, the current leaders in this season’s Surrey League Division 1.
In the women’s race, Bruinvels is expected on the start line bidding for Surrey win No6, where her challengers are likely to include the winners of the two Surrey League races so far this winter, Alice Crane of Dorking and Mole Valley and Lucy Jones of Herne Hill, the club expected to push defending champions Aldershot closest for the team title.
Herne Hill’s women runners are a massive success story of 2024, through all the age groups, including lifting the women’s road relay national title in October and following it up a fortnight later with a gold medal performance at the South of England cross- country relays.
Title-winner: in 2023, Poppy Craig-McFeely won the Surrey U20s in Lloyd Park. Last month, the Herne Hill Harrier won European U23 gold
Last month, Phoebe Anderson won the under-23s individual and team gold for Great Britain at the European cross-country championships staged in Turkey, with her Herne Hill clubmate Poppy Craig-McFeely also in the winning team. Craig-McFeeley was the runaway winner of the Surrey junior cross-country title the last time the county championships were staged in Lloyd Park in 2023.
This overnight success of Herne Hill has been years in the making at their track base at nearby Tooting Bec. Coaches James McDonald, Wayne Vinton, Keith Newton, Steve Knight and Geoff Jerwood have been developing talent for more than a decade.
As well as local talents, such as Tokyo Olympics 1,500m finallist Katie Snowden, Tooting has become a home-from-home for adult runners who have moved to south London for work or study, such as Georgie Grgec, who has won selections for her native New Zealand after seven years being based in Britain.
Grgec was the star performer in the national road relays at Sutton Coldfield, running one of the fastest stages ever seen on the course – close to the record lap that was set by Paula Radcliffe – but she was backed up by strong team performances from medical student Darcie Hay, Lucy Jones and 43-year-old Gaby Reynolds, racing just six months after having her third child.
But for Herne Hill to have two members in the same Great Britain team, as they did with Columbia University graduate Anderson and Craig-McFeely in Antalya last month, is a sign of strength in depth that most clubs can only dream about.
Tomorrow in Lloyd Park will mark the 2025 starting point for many Surrey runners, whether their goal is be the next Olympics Games or just getting round the London Marathon course in April in one piece. But keep an eye out for those Dennis-the-Menace black and red hooped vests at the Surrey Cross-country Championships – Herne Hill could be giving established forces like Aldershot and Belgrace a run for their money.
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Even the first race (Under 13s at 10.30am) will probably find a muddy, chewed up course, after a large field of park runners (boosted by all those New Year’s Resolution people) have already run there at 9am tomorrow ?!
Is the winner just the fastest round the course, or will there also be prizes for anyone who manages to avoid slipping over at all on the course?
Tram passengers and dog walkers at Lloyd Park will be able to see the mud on the course for at least the following week !
Not the case.
ParkRun, every week at 9am, has a remarkably low impact on the park, but a remarkably high impact on the health and fitness of those who take part regularly. You should try it Jim.
The park has staged significant cross-country races for decades, and always manages to “self-repair” within a few days.
I am an amputee (right leg, above knee, since 1994), so I don’t do running and haven’t run a single step in 30 years, but I DO cycle (much better than walking as it is non-weight-bearing exercise), more than 100k miles of cycling since becoming an amputee !
Good to see established athletes use Park Run as preps to the Championship. Kavanagh flew around the muddy 5K in under 16 minutes last Saturday. Can I get a bet on him?
Did you get your bet on? You were on to a winner!
If only a bookmaker had started a book on it.