Forest, hills, grass, then suddenly some old a** carriages.
Picture a cross-country course for runners and most will imagine an artificially carved out section of forest featuring hills, stream crossings, and long grassy straights. The 2022 European Cross Country Championship’s course was mostly all that with an indoor 50-meter section that truly makes this course unique.
The 2022 European Cross Country Championship was held in Turin, Italy at La Mandria Park.
The course map is a 1500-meter loop that’s run several times based on the length of the race (between 4,000-10,000 meters.)
Here’s the course map below.
Since the park is near Borogo Castello, a literal castle built in 1859, the course makers decided to route runners indoors.
“The course includes a 50-meters indoor section, which goes through the carriage pavilion of one of the castle’s outbuildings before the runners emerge back outdoors onto a challenging course.”
Here’s a fan submitted video from Athletics Weekly previewing that indoor bit.
When I bookmarked that video I found it hard to believe they’d actually run through that bit but, come race day and literally hundreds of Europe’s top runners did just that.
Thankfully, the meet organizers lined the wood-slated floor with artificial grass and, for a couple of seconds each lap, runners confusedly ran by horse-drawn carriages, not to mention a grand piano, some stools, and statues, before making a sharp corner out of the castle.
Here are some screenshots from that portion of the race.
Here are some videos cued up to that portion of the race.
With this being the first time fans of the sport saw a unique course laid out by thinking outside the box, imaginations ran wild on Instagram.
“Can we please have more XC races that just run through absolutely absurd settings,” a Runner Space follower commented on the post. “Imagine a USATF XC Championship that includes a 100-yard stretch inside a Cheesecake factory.”
“I want to see them race through an amusement park and a mall,”commented another.
Honestly, as cool as this was, this possibly can’t scale if you’ve got hundreds of runners of similar level all trying to squeeze through such a tiny space.
It’s no small wonder no one tripped and, with all that momentum, face planted into an ancient carriage.
But, for an elite Cross Country race with experienced runners, this was interesting to see to say the least.
