Monday 8th February, 2010

Olympic medallist praises Stirling's testing campus course!

Former Olympic medal winning athlete Liz McColgan praised the testing cross country course at the University of Stirling.

Around 1,000 students from across the UK descended on Scotland's University for Sporting Excellence for the 2010 British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) cross country championships on Saturday.

British internationalists Andy Vernon and Steph Twell, students at St Mary's University College in Twickenham, retained their men's and women's titles respectively.

And both they - and the venue - impressed McColgan, who was on hand to present the prizes. "I've raced at the University of Stirling many times," said McColgan, who took the silver medal in the 10,000 metres at Seoul in 1998, two years after a Commonwealth gold over the same distance in Edinburgh. "It's a brilliant course, really tough and challenging, what I would term natural cross country as it is up hills and in the mud.

"It is great to see so many athletes coming here, competing and doing well and also to have the top runners coming and representing their universities.

"Steph Twell and Andy Vernon are both running well at the moment; they were obviously the favourites, but it still takes a performance to pull it out of the bag. In the end, they both showed their class and won by quite a margin."

Hot favourites Vernon and Twell repeated their victories in 2008, with Olympian Twell completing the 6.4km race in 22.41 minutes while Vernon made light work of the 11.1km event, recording a time of 34.32 minutes.

Vernon, a 2nd year Sports Science student, said: "I didn't really have a race plan, just decided to see how it went on the day. As the race went on, I opened up a gap and after one of the hills I looked to push on and make the gap bigger.

"I've a heavy workload at the moment with lots of races coming up so I just raced this as part of my training week. The course is good, always with something for you to think about like tight corners to keep you on your toes.

"The aim long term is to run in the European Championships in the track events at Barcelona, but first I'm going to the States in April to train and there are plenty of indoor meets to keep pushing me."

The University of Stirling's own athletics club was well represented, with six runners in the men's main race and four in the women's event, all coping well with the course.

Stirling hosted the cross country championships for the second time in recent years, with the University Sports Union having put forward another successful bid to host the event.