What is Cross Country?
While the sport got its start in England, cross country running is now very popular among middle school, high school, and college athletes in the U.S. Tens of thousands of students participate, and the number grows every year.
Cross country is a sport that involves extensive running for long distances and periods of time, and it requires great endurance and the ability to embrace solitude. Recommended complementary/alternate sports for runners include swimming, soccer and tennis.
Races are started in masses, sometimes with each team having its own bull pen or box along the start line. Boxes may be big enough to fit the entire team on the starting line. In some meets, there is only enough room for one or two runners from each team on the line. 토토사이트 The 3-5 remaining team members (a team requiring 5-7 runners) follow in a line, and if permitted may flow into other boxes. A gun or horn is then sounded, and runners have a few hundred meters to converge from the wide starting line into the much narrower path that must be followed until the finish. However, races are typically smaller in the common dual races between two schools, so that there is generally enough room for each team on the starting line. In these dual races, instead of starting in boxes, teams may be interspersed along the start line.
HISTORY
Cross country is an organized sport that originated from the Crick Run held nearly every year since 1838 at Rugby School in England. In the early 19th century, cross country was practiced in all private schools in England. In 1851, undergraduates atExeter College, Oxford organized a foot grind. This was an analogy with steeple chasing on horse where a race would be held towards the nearest church steeple, forcing riders to clear rural obstacles such as hedges, fences, and ditches. A two-mile cross country steeplechase formed part of the Oxford University sports (in which many of the modern athletics events were founded) in 1860, but was replaced in 1865 by an event over barriers on a flat field, which became the modern steeplechase in athletics.
In 1868, members of Thames Rowing Club looking for winter exercise (when rowing did not take place then) formed Thames Hare and Hounds in Roehampton on the south-west fringes of London and adjoining Wimbledon Common on which cross-country races were staged. They were joined by Peckham Hare and Hounds in 1869 (which became Blackheath Harriers in 1880), Cheshire Tally Ho Hare and Hounds in 1872, Birchfield Harriers 1877, Cambridge University Hare and Hounds in 1880, andRanelagh Harriers in 1881. The English Cross Country Union followed in 1883 which introduced the National Championships. Most of these early clubs continue to thrive to this day. The reason for the names associated with hunting is that in many of the early matches, the course was set by paper chasing: a few runners (the hares) would have a start on the bulk of the field (the 'hounds'), and lay a 'scent' by scattering a paper trail behind them which the hounds would follow. Racing would take place between the hares and the hounds and within the hounds themselves. Because of the obvious nuisance this can generate, this form of racing was largely discontinued quite early on. Occasional matches still take place, by Cheshire Tally Ho and the popular Hash House Harriers, for example. However, from an early date steeplechases and championship races also took place over fixed courses, as today.
In 1878, the sport was introduced to the United States by William C. Vosburgh. At first, the sport served mainly as training for summer track and field athletics. Nine years later, cross country running became a formal sport in the United States. Despite the international popularity of cross-country, the sport was dropped from the Olympic Games after 1924 due to it being an inappropriate summer sport. In the 1960s, the International Amateur Athletic Federation, which regulates cross-country running, allowed women to run for the first time.
The sport is still popular in temperate countries, but is relatively unknown in Asia. Japan's love of distance running has manifested itself in a slightly different format, theEkiden, which began in 1917. Internationally, the IAAF organizes the World Cross Country Championships. In recent years, courses have tended to change to faster, drier courses than the traditional ones.
