Cuppers 2023

After a wet and frankly unpleasant start to Michaelmas, members of OUCCC found themselves once again toeing the line at Cuppers. There was a huge variety in turnout, from first timers, to Cuppers veterans with an absurd 7 previous appearances (apparently a DPhil can last as long as you want it to). Those who had been smart enough not to run the Oxford Half the previous weekend were eager to kick off their cross country season with some laps of our sacred course round South Parks. Those who had run it, were surprisingly optimistic, probably due to having the perfect excuse if everything went wrong.

Thanks to the recent heavy rainfall, this year’s instalment featured a very muddy bottom end, just to make sure everyone was in the cross country spirit. However, the rain had fortunately stopped by the start of the Women’s race, which was 2 laps, 6.2km and 125m of elevation gain. There was drama from the start, with an early DNF from Alex Shipley, leaving Maddy Williams and Lauren Major to battle it out for the win. An in form Lauren managed to pull away to take the title of Queen of South Parks, with a time of 24:00 (24s faster than her time last year), forcing Maddy to settle for 2nd in 24:14. Having finished 10 places higher and 75s quicker than last year, Maddy clearly decided that the last year of her undergrad is the perfect time to go for glory. Following up was two of our undergrad freshers Beth Rawlinson and Jemima Ridley, showing the Women’s team has had a highly impressive intake. This is backed up by the fact that despite losing a large proportion of the team last year, the top 16 finishers finished in approximately the same time as last year (26:24), even with unfavourable conditions.

Next was the Men’s race, lasting 3 laps, 9.4km and 190m of elevation gain. We’re always keen to raise the average age of the blues team as high as possible, which made the debut of postgrad fresher Jonny Cornish and the return of Alex Gruen even more exciting. Jonny is British road 5k silver medallist and our Men’s Vice Alex Bampton is sure Alex Gruen has run a 3:35 1500m, so both are huge additions to the team. We also had the return of last year’s champ, Naph Moulton and the ever strong Joe Morrow looking to take the win.

The battle for victory however, ended up being between Naph and Joe who fought over the entire 9.4km of the course. In the end Joe just beat Naph to the line by 1s, and was crowned King of South Parks with a time of 30:30s. Following them in were our new boys Jonny and Alex, with Indy Barnes, the first undergrad, placing 5th. The club showed incredible strength and depth this year, with the top 16 finishers beating the 8th placing finisher last year, with a winning time 25s quicker despite the unfavourable ground conditions. This increase in strength is probably due to the team’s historic achievement of losing absolutely no one from last year. All undergrad finalists continued to postgrad courses, whilst current postgrads carried on valiantly refusing to finish their Dphils. To end the day, a number of awards were given for notable accomplishments. The keen bean award was given to Naph for his false start, and the Miles Weatherseed award for dropping out was awarded, once again, to Miles Weatherseed (Making his final tally 3 finishes to 5 DNFs).

There was a massive turnout this year and it was a great event for everyone involved. Huge thanks go to Joe Morrow and Esther Jones for organising it.