The University Cross Country Races
Gentlemen’s 1880 · Ladies’ 1976 · Old Blues’ 1990
The University Cross Country Races are the annual match between Oxford University Cross-Country Club (OUCCC) and Cambridge University Hare & Hounds (CUH&H), held in London on the first Saturday of December.
Since 1896 the match has been hosted on neutral ground by Thames Hare & Hounds, the oldest cross-country club in the world. It is the second oldest team contest in the sport, and one of the few still raced in the eight v. eight format. The course on Wimbledon Common gives the student athletes who take part an experience like no other.
The rivalry spans nearly 150 years. The amateur student athletes lucky enough to be selected follow in the footsteps of greats such as Sir Roger Bannister and Sir Christopher Chataway.
The Gentlemen’s race was first run in 1880. An unofficial women’s race was run in 1975, and the official Ladies’ race has been run since 1976. The Old Blues’ race was first run in 1990, the year of the Gentlemen’s Centenary Race, and now opens the afternoon.
A good crowd turns out every year, and the spectators who chase the runners round the course give the day its special atmosphere.
Photographs from 2025 by Graham Smith Photography.
Thames Hare & Hounds
The oldest cross-country club in the world, and the reason the Races are run at Roehampton.
TH&H began with members of Thames Rowing Club in Putney, who wanted to keep fit once the rowing season ended. After a steeplechase from the Red Lion in Putney in December 1867, the club held its first recognised run on 17 October 1868: a handicap “paper hunt” from the King’s Head at Roehampton. The hares set off laying a trail of paper and the hounds chased them, with a pewter for the first hound to catch each hare.
In February 1877 the club hosted the first championship race between the London paperchase clubs, the start of what became the National Cross Country Championships. Thames won the team race from the King’s Head, and Percy Stenning won the first of his four individual titles.
How the Races came to Roehampton
Oxford and Cambridge took turns to host the race from 1880 to 1895. In 1890 they asked TH&H to stage it over the club’s Roehampton course. That first attempt was a fiasco: the runners lost the paper trail between Coombe Hill and Raynes Park, no race was declared, and it was re-run at Oxford the following February. From 1896 the match moved to the Thames course for good, and Thames courses have been its home ever since, apart from 1926 to 1938 at Horton Kirby and the war years.
The club lost the King’s Head in August 1975 and moved to its present headquarters on the Memorial Playing Fields at Roehampton Vale, where every race now starts and finishes. That was the year before the Ladies’ race was first run on the Common, in 1976.
In December 2021 World Athletics named TH&H as one of seven new recipients of a Heritage Plaque, for its part in the early development of cross-country running.
Where the race has been run
- 1880–1895Hosted by Oxford and Cambridge in turn
- 1896–1925Thames course from the King’s Head, Roehampton village, to the Old Well House on Putney Heath
- 1926–1938Horton Kirby, starting and finishing at Westminster Mill
- 1940–1944Wartime races, hosted by Oxford and Cambridge in turn
- 1945–1966Thames course at Roehampton, from the Big Holly Bush
- 1967–1969Thames course from the Common side of the underpass where Roehampton Lane meets the A3
- 1970–1974Thames course from the War Memorial on Putney Heath
- 1975–todayThames headquarters, Memorial Playing Fields, Roehampton Vale
