Will Barnicoat, Tomer Tarragano, Jess Bailey and Olympic marathoner Jared Ward are among the entries for the 2025 championships this weekend
On Saturday more than 2000 student athletes will descend on Blackweir Fields in Cardiff for the British Universities and Colleges Cross Country Championships. Racing in the shadow of Cardiff Castle, many will have their faces daubed in paint with the colours of their institution. For quite a few it will be the highlight of the winter season.
Competitors will range from teenage ‘freshers’ who are mid-way through their first year at university, through to athletes like Jared Ward, a veteran American marathon star who finished sixth in the Olympic marathon in Rio in 2016 and now, aged 36, is studying for an MBA in global business at Oxford University.
Among his many achievements, Ward has a statistics degree from Brigham Young University, a marathon best of 2:09:25 set in Boston in 2019 and he is a father to six children. Given this, there will surely be a few jokes in Cardiff this weekend that he is almost old enough to be the dad of most of his younger rivals. It will be no laughing matter once the gun fires, though.
Jared Ward (Getty)
Ward is set to face, among others, Will Barnicoat, Tomer Tarragano and David Stone from Birmingham University. Barnicoat and Stone won gold and bronze in the under-23 men’s race at the European Cross Country Championships in Turkey in December whereas Tarragano won the men’s race at the Liverpool Cross Challenge earlier this winter.
Barnicoat also has a title to defend as he won the BUCS crown in Leeds 12 months ago, finishing half a minute ahead of Tarragano and Oliver Smart.
Will Barnicoat and David Stone (Getty)
It is hard to tell what kind of shape Ward is in, but he showed an affinity to typically muddy cross-country conditions by emerging as winner of the Oxford vs Cambridge Varsity match in December.
The ground might be a little better in Cardiff this weekend. Despite recent heavy rain, Saturday is set to be largely dry and veteran race organiser Graham Finlayson tells AW: “The course is run on open parkland with some woodland section and a section of a stone dust and five road crossings. It is flat and it will be fast.”
The location is different to the Llandaff Fields course that has staged the Cardiff Cross Challenge in recent seasons, although Blackweir Park used to host Cross Challenge events in the past.
With Barnicoat, Stone and Tarragano likely to…
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