Sussex cross-country history was created by both the senior winners at Bexhill last Saturday.
Worthing’s Jack Leitch’s surprise victory in the men’s event made him only the second Worthing & District Harrier to win the crown in the nearly one hundred years of the championship and the first Worthing winner in the last seventy years.
It was way back in 1948, the year of the Olympic Games at Wembley that Dick Chandler, who lived at Amberley, took the title and he was to be involved in the only dead heat in the history of the race, with Horsham Blue Star’s Dennis Gander in 1949.
In 1995 Stephen Harris, the father of Leah who finished fourth in Saturday’s women’s race, won the first of three titles but by then he had left Worthing and moved on to Boxhill Runners and then Phoenix.
The team victory for Brighton & Hove took their total of teams wins, since the championships were first held in 1925, to just one short of a half century. For most of the competitions since then Brighton & Hove or Horsham Blue Star have shared team victories and Horsham have won 29 titles to Brighton & Hove’s 49 but the Horsham club have not won the team event since 1982. No other club has yet reached double figures.
In the women’s championship, which has been held since 1964, Nicole Taylor’s (Tonbridge) fourth successive victory lifts her to equal on the individual list. Osly two runners have won more senior cross-country titles than her.
Caroline Hoyte (Herbert) (Arena 80), who finished ninth on Saturday, has seven titles to her name while Emma Macready (Taylor/Gooby) Worthing has won five titles. Now Footman she continued her return to competition and placed fifth at Bexhill.
Nicole Taylor shares third place with Brighton & Hove’s Penny Yule (Now Forse), who won her first title in 1965, on four wins.
Brighton & Hove, who for the first time in history, because of injury and illness, failed to finish a team at Bexhill, lead the total of team winners since the first race in 64 on 21 victories but Arena 80, who won at Bexhill, are creeping closer and now have 17 victories. Crawley on 11 is the only other Club to achieve double figures.
This year the women’s race was extended to 10km, instead of the normal 6.4km which is the furthest they have had to race and in order to make the event Gender Equal the men’s event has been reduced from the traditional 7 ½ miles/12km, which is the shortest distance that the men have raced since an emergency 5.5 miles/9km race in 1963.
That year officials had to walk the course in the morning to make a path in the deep snow otherwise the race would have been cancelled.
That year Horsham’s John Luxford, who was one of the dominant Sussex Cross-country runners throughout the sixties, won his only senior cross country title.
A full list of all the Sussex senior cross-country winners will be published on the Sussex website in the next few days.