7 Comments
Feb 21, 2023Liked by Kevin Beck

Sexual abuse by coaches happens distressingly often. My wife escaped an attempted assault -- not by a coach but a fellow runner. A year or two before I met her, she was part of her province's team at the South African cross country championships. After the post-race function, a much older male member of the team -- a well-known and respected masters runner (and a professor) chased her and tried to grab her. She was lucky enough to be able to escape (physically) unscathed.

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Feb 20, 2023Liked by Kevin Beck

The course was bizarre. Much of it was proper cross country, including running through a billabong, but the part with the tires (or tyres because it was in Australia) was weird, especially when the leaders were lapping slower runners. In a world championship event runners shouldn't be slow enough to be lapped when the course is 5 laps of 2km.

Also very strange that it was held in Bathurst. It is a long enough trip for most runners to get to Australia, but they then had to travel to the middle of nowhere -- Bathurst is about 100 miles from Sydney, the closest reasonably large city. The tires are probably because it is much more famous for a motor vehicle race, the Bathurst 1000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathurst_1000.

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Feb 20, 2023Liked by Kevin Beck

I went to the 1984 Championships held at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. It was a blasthttps://www.runnerstribe.com/features/world-cross-country-classics-east-rutherford-new-jersey-usa-1984/

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Feb 20, 2023Liked by Kevin Beck

I don’t have to go farther than “too bad the US doesn’t prioritize”

I’ve attended 3 championships. Greatest running I’ve ever seen.

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