Go Feet: Ranelagh Harriers

Showing posts with label Ranelagh Harriers. Show all posts

Friday, 17 April 2015

Friday photos (22 ) - More 1890s English Athletes

I featured some photos a few weeks ago from an 1896 book entitled the 'Sportfolio: portraits and biographies of heroes and heroines of sports and pastimes'. I have never seen the actual book, but had found a few images from it on ebay. In response to that post, Jennifer Miller (who runs with 'New Jersey's Best Running Club' Raritan Valley Road Runners) got in touch. Not only has she seen the whole book, but she has scanned all the pictures in of athletes - and kindly shared them to post here.

George Crossland, Salford Harriers:

E.C.Bredin, London Athletic Club:

A. Ovenden, London Athletic Club:

Sid Thomas, Ranelagh Harriers, and later professional runner:

H.A. Munro, Lea Harriers:

J.E. Dixon (not stated in book, but he ran for Spartan Harriers):

E.J. WIlkins, London Athletic Club:

E.H. Pelling, Ranelagh Harriers

(Ranelagh and Blackheath & Bromley still compete for the Pelling-Ratcliff trophy):

Some very well groomed gentlemen there, reminding me of a comment about hair I read in an issue of the Ranelagh Harriers Gazette (no.167, May 2013) which I picked up in their clubhouse recently. It was a reprint of an article by 'Alsoran' from the Gazette a century ago (30 April 1914) describing the club's trip to Guildford for the Southern Cross Country Championships.The author writes: 'after the team had bathed themselves and got back to their right senses, besides bestowing very great care upon their hair - this being characteristic of all good-class runners - we got underweigh for The Three Pigeons... Things went quite in the ordinary way with each member of the team explaining how he beat old so-and-so, and gallantly passed five thousand men in the last quarter-of-a-mile, all for the honour of the Club, of course, and not for his own special glorification'

Once again I am fascinated by the sophistication of running kit design at this period - note the thin white stripes on Salford Harriers shorts (not to mention Thomas's lederhosen!), and the specially-made shoes with spikes. They look quite similar to theses ones from the 1950s (photo from excellent I Was, or Am a Runner group on facebook):

Previously in Friday photo series:

1890s Athletes (and their shorts)

New York High School Runners 1970s

Lilian Board, 1948-1970
Running in Tel Aviv 1942
Alan Turing the Runner

Marilyn Monroe the Runner
Tom Longboat, Canadian First Nations Marathon Runner
Runners in Space: an image from Munich 1972 on NASA's Voyager spacecraft

Jim Peters collapses in Vancouver 1954

Anita Neil - Britain's first female Black Olympian?

Running in the Streets of New Cross 1953

Running tracks from space

Running with Madonna

Ron Hill

1930s photos from Margate (Kent) and White City (London)

Magic Lantern Slides of London Running, 1909

Ladywell Running Track 1950
Muhammad Ali Running

Athletes Protests, 1968-2014
National Cross Country Championships 1965

1948 Olympics in London

Friday, 13 February 2015

Surrey Cross Country League - last match of 2014-15 season in Richmond Park

Last weekend (Saturday 7 February) saw the last of the four races in this season's 2XU Surrey Men's Cross Country League Division One, hosted by Ranelagh Harriers in Richmond Park. Kent A.C went into the match as a more or less dead cert to win the championship, having won all three previous races. And indeed they went on to hold on to the trophy for the third year in a row, even though on the day they were pushed into second place by Thames Hare and Hounds.

The match was an uncanny rerun of the same fixture last year, also won by Thames H&H at Richmond Park, with Kent A.C. second but winning the League. And in both 2014 and 2015 the individual race was won by Paskar Owor of Belgrave Harriers with a 17 second gap between him and second finisher John Gilbert (Kent AC). The first five of 174 finishers last week were:

1. Paskar Owor (Belgrave Harriers)

2. John Gilbert (Kent AC)

3. Chris Greenwood (Kent AC)

4. Kevin Quinn (South London Harriers)

5. Ryan Evans (South London Harriers)

(full 2015 results here)

Paskar Owor (in hat) on his way to his third victory in Surrey League this season.

The course was over two laps, 5.65 miles in total, at the Petersham end of Richmond Park. After some of the muddy hills of previous fixtures, it was a bit of a breeze with a nice long descent to start with along a track known as the Queen's Ride. If anything I could have done without spikes as parts of the course were quite gravelly underfoot.

I ran for Kent, although I didn't come close to scoring in my three outings in the League it was great to be on the fringes of a winning team. As well as winning the senior men's League, the club's Alex Yee won all four races in the under-17s races and will be one to watch when he moves up to run in senior competitions next year. The women's team also had a good start in their first season in the League, with some strong performances.

(see Kent AC report here)

Surrey League trophy

After tea and cake in the Ranelagh Harriers clubhouse in Petersham, we retired to the White Cross, a fine riverside pub in Richmond, to celebrate.

Kent AC celebrate League victory in the White Cross

1947: French cross country runners get lost in Richmond Park

Ranelagh Harriers did a good job of organising the race last week with enough marshals to make sure there was no repeat of this incident from 1947: 'Three members of the Paris University team took a wrong turning in a six-mile cross country race with London University in Richmond Park'. They were found two hours later having run eleven and a half miles!