Scents of History

HARE & HOUNDS and looks to its future this year. Duncan Craig delves into running club anniversary SCENTS th HISTORY 150 cross-country celebrates its world’s oldestOF Thames Hare & Hounds the rich history of the 044 RUNNERSWORLD.CO.UK MARCH 2018 XXXXXXXXMARCH 20172018 RUNNER’SWORLD.CO.UKRUNNERSWORLD.CO.UK 045 HARE & HOUNDS ‘Now remember, be considerate of other users of the common,’ says club president Mike Farmery, The event was reported in the two eyes fixed, and thumb poised, on biggest newspapers for Victorian the stopwatch in his right hand. He recreation, The Sportsman and looks up and smiles through round, Sporting Life, and the club was born. steamed-up glasses. ‘If, of course, What followed has been a century and there are any.’ a half of wild popularity, stagnation, We can see his point. The conditions self-imposed exile, reinvention, are grim. Snow is falling in front of innovation and achievement. Its the clubhouse, and not that fluffy, history has encompassed Olympic festive stuff: this is spiky, nasty, triumph, world records and pioneering sleet-snow that has the 70 or so of moments in running history. And, in reads: ‘The Londoner is familiar belt of extravagantly gifted Oxbridge us on the start line hunched over its unassuming way, it has helped Clockwise from left: Hare with no sport so much as that of a alumni that lasts to this day. A trio of & Hounds president Mike and squinting. Underfoot is not to lay the foundations for much of Farmery; a typical day at the paper-chase, for along even the most these would become the club’s most so much waterlogged as just water, what defines the modern running races; the wall of fame; map crowded streets of the city, in all sorts celebrated members. which the sub-zero overnight landscape, from Tough Mudder and showing the route of a race of weather, scantily-clad youths may Alongside the kitchen counter in the temperatures have crusted into ice parkrun to the London Marathon. around Wimbledon Common be seen running for practice in the clubhouse, from which I’ll be served in places. There’s a course under it evening splashed from head to foot some much-needed postrace tea, somewhere; we just can’t make it out. with mud.’ But this popularity was there’s a black-and-white shot of the Wind, ice, snow, rain: a full house of Following in the footsteps anathema to Rye, who also served as famous three. They run in single file, inclement winter conditions. the first president of the club. He’d in perfect synchronicity. At the front, ‘Proper cross-country weather,’ says Mike counts us off and we slide established Thames with a purist, wearing spectacles and a slightly goofy a chap alongside me, eyes glinting. and splash our way south from the gentleman-amateur ethos (the earliest look, is Chris Brasher; bringing up the He’s wearing lightweight shorts and clubhouse across the Richardson rules stated that ‘all members must be rear, stockier and more exuberantly a running vest, and his skin is an Evans Memorial Fields, before turning gentlemen by birth or education’) and coiffured, Chris Chataway; and alarming shade of blue. sharply to trace the path of Beverley was thoroughly resistant to the idea between them, on his way to achieving We’re here for the Second Sunday 5, Brook. The brook has been a fixture of of cross-country running as spectacle what had been considered humanly the monthly five-mile cross-country Thames races since the very earliest rather than simple athletic endeavour. impossible, Roger Bannister. It’s race across Wimbledon Common days. The 1867 Thames Handicap ‘In the very early years we May 6, 1954, at Iffley Road, and staged by Thames Hare & Hounds. Steeplechase, the run organised by were strong and successful,’ says Bannister, with his two friends and The field is a mixed bunch: plenty Thames Rowing Club that was the Molden. ‘We were involved in the pacers, is in the process of breaking the of Thames shirts, their running tops precursor to the formal foundation establishment of the National Cross four-minute mile. They run on a track – bearing the club’s distinctive black of the club, came along this way, with Country Championships, the very first but the strength in their lean, wiry saltire, but also a jovial bunch from that seminal 1868 race following the of which was run in Epping Forest in limbs was the product of years of Fulham Running Club, using the event opposite bank through what was then squelching along these very same tracks – their gaits 1877, and won two of the first four. But cross-country. as their Christmas jolly. Their colours known, with a touch of Victorian elan, broadly the same, their breath also hanging in the damp when Rye could not hold back the tide This trio of Hare & Hounds went on are also black and white, albeit hoops. as the ‘Dismal Swamp’. I give up trying winter air – barely a couple of years after the end of the any longer, he withdrew Thames from to accomplish great feats, both on and The untrained eye might conflate to skip over and around the standing American Civil War. the competitive athletics world and we off the track, establishing close links the two groups – but not those in the water (the default of a road runner) One notable difference (two, if we’re including the became a backwater.’ By 1895 the club with Thames and helping to boost its know. Because what we have here, and join my fellow competitors in extravagant facial hair of the day) would have been in kit. was almost dead. ‘The secretary was profile. Retiring from competitive side by side, is one of the country’s ploughing through it. Today, the club’s online store stocks Thames vests, wicking so pessimistic, he didn’t even publish athletics with surprising haste, youngest clubs, and its oldest and I run with a sense of history. It’s T-shirts and branded base layers. Back then, running vests a fixture book,’ says Molden. Roger Bannister was subsequently most revered. humbling to think of young men were rather more rudimentary. Club founder Walter Rye knighted for services to medicine. October 17 this year will mark the came up with the black saltire and often this would just be Brasher became Britain’s first athletics 150th anniversary of the first formal pieces of fabric cursorily stitched on to the nearest available Famous sons Olympic gold medallist in 20 years cross-country race staged by Thames. garment. In some cases, this approach persisted. ‘Right up when he won the 3,000m steeplechase It departed from the King’s Head in until the 1970s, members had vests with two strips of black What saved the club was an approach in 1956. He established the London Roehampton and was a handicap ribbon sewn on to them,’ says club historian and archivist by Oxford and Cambridge universities Marathon in 1981, his magnetism paper chase, a bloodless derivative Simon Molden. ‘Some of the older guys still wear them.’ the following year for Thames to host helping to pull in the big names and of hunting in which ‘hares’ would The earliest rules stated From that first race, the popularity of cross-country the annual cross-country Varsity make the race the unstoppable success set off first, marking their route running spread like a paper scent on a blustery December match. It brought a renewed sense of it is today. Chataway was a government with a trail of paper (the ‘scent’). that ‘all members must day. There’s a wonderful framed illustration in the purpose and – via the introduction minister and the first BBC Sports The pack, or ‘hounds’, would then clubhouse showing a group of strapping chaps hurdling that the Varsity race gave potential Personality of the Year in 1954, mainly begin their pursuit, with the victor be gentlemen by birth a gate and running past a bewildered family gathered, members to the club, its courses and thanks to his extraordinary 5,000m being the first to catch the hares. or education’ open-mouthed, on their stoop. The antiquated caption its ethos – it also created a conveyor victory on the cinder track of 046 RUNNERSWORLD.CO.UK MARCH 2018 MARCH 2018 RUNNERSWORLD.CO.UK 047 HARE & HOUNDS Bleasdale admits can be emotionally draining. Cross- Andrew Boyd Hutchison, author of the Complete History club treasurer Suphi Bedevi. ‘But then country can be the perfect antidote to that – a return to of Cross Country Running (Carrel Books), is delighted track and field took off, with lots of our the grass roots, literally, and the joy of running for running’s the sport is thriving, but he longs for courses to be more athletes starting to go to the Olympics. sake. The variation in courses, terrain and conditions frees reflective of those very earliest races tackled by pioneering Our cross-country runners still do runners from the tyranny of the stopwatch, and helps them Hare & Hounds members. ‘The down and dirty has well, but we’re not dominating like relax. Not that it’s a walk in the park, of course. ‘Cross- been missing,’ says Hutchison. ‘The hedge jumping, the ‘The club is a special we did in the good old days.’ country comes back to that traditional approach,’ ditches, the natural obstacles – the things that really place forged out of Plenty of other clubs share similar says Bleasdale. ‘Getting out there in the grit and the mud differentiate the sport from a grass-track meet.’ To this histories, with the ‘harriers’ suffix a in all weathers and feeling the elements.

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