This winter has already seen a number of events either cancelled or postponed. From the Great South Run in Portsmouth to the English Schools Cross Country Cup in Leeds and South of England Inter-Counties in Croydon, high winds and torrential rain have caused mayhem.
It raises the question: is this cancel culture creating a nation of fair-weather athletes or are the decisions taken by organisers simply sensible and, ultimately, the right call?
Talk to old-timers and they will tell you that events were hardly ever cancelled 30 or 40 years ago. Yet, in recent years, every time a storm sweeps across Britain there are seemingly a wave of call-offs.
The extreme weather events caused by climate change have been cited as the problem, yet event organisers are also under pressure like never before due to insurance and health and safety demands. Rigorous risk assessments have become commonplace for athletics events, while wider cultural changes have also resulted in people becoming more litigious and, in the case of many parents, cautious.
“Every event will have its own reason for being cancelled,” says Ken Burkett from the English Schools Athletics Association. “At the English Schools Cross Country Cup it was an issue to do with the well-publicised Storm Darragh coming in from across the Atlantic with high winds, yellow and orange warnings and it would have been irresponsible for us to say: ‘Yes, turn up and it’ll be fine’.
“The winds in Leeds that day were forecast to be more than 30mph and the course was more than 150m above sea level, so it would be even windier than that. The school, with their insurance hat on, said they were not allowed out in the fields so it was taken out of our hands, really. There were lots of old trees and they didn’t want them to come down on anybody. You are in the hands of the landowner at the end of the day.
“The event is now on March 1 at the same venue [The Grammar School at Leeds] and we’re looking forward to it being a great event.”
Whereas the English Schools Cross Country Cup featured teams of children racing on muddy fields, the Great South Run in October was due to see a record 23,000 people running on the roads of the south coast of England, but high winds made it too dangerous to go ahead.
“The forecasted winds and gusts compromised our event infrastructure, including our medical facilities at the finish and around the course,” organisers said. “This, combined with high tide levels, potential debris and the exposure along the seafront mean that we couldn’t guarantee the safe delivery of the event. Safety of our participants, staff and volunteers is our number one priority.”
At the South of England Inter-Counties in Croydon, winds were causing the portable toilets to blow over. David Harris from the South of England Athletics Association, said: “We were also not able to put up tents and gazebos at all, which were required for athlete registration, officials registration etc.”
Old school cross-country runners clamber under barbed wire
Burkett, who is also a geography teacher and long-time secretary of the Kent Schools Athletics Association, says portaloos almost certainly didn’t even exist at events many years ago. Neither did things like an event HQ, hi-vis jackets, radios, four-wheel drive vehicles or quad bikes to enable First Aiders out to various corners of a course.
“Everything has become more professional these days but, due to this, we seem to have lost that element of adventure,” Burkett says, before adding: “You see the old photos of runners wading through chest-deep water and clambering through barbed wire and it might have been fun, but it doesn’t mean we should be doing that any more.
“Today there are organisers with radios, risk assessments and safety plans and it’s all impressively organised with dozens of people involved. Maybe we’ve made it more complicated than it ever was, but in the past we’ve seen accidents at track and field meetings with hammers and javelins hitting people so maybe the old days weren’t so good?”
Surrey League at Lloyd Park (Mark Shearman)
It isn’t just cross-country, road and fell or mountain running races that have been affected by the winter weather. Even indoor events have been called off in recent seasons, such as the Scottish Championships at the Emirates Arena last month, with the owners of the venue making the decision following red weather warnings caused by Storm Éowyn.
There are some, however, who have managed to largely avoid cancellations. Joe Mower, the championship secretary for the English Cross Country Association, was involved in the postponement of the English National at Weston Park near Telford last year due to the car parks being flooded but he cannot recall overseeing any other call-offs during more than half a century in the sport.
Similarly, Graham Finlayson, organiser of the Cardiff Cross Challenge and recent British Universities (BUCS) Cross Country Championships, says: “Over all the years I have been putting on road and cross country races I have never had one cancel but it is getting harder to put on races. With the council, their paperwork gets bigger and bigger.”
(Mark Shearman)
The BUCS Championships has not always gone ahead so smoothly, though. The 2009 event in Aberdeen featured on the cover of AW with the headline ‘snow joke’ after an unofficial race – won by Andy Vernon – went ahead in defiance of the organisers, who had cancelled it due to heavy snowfall when many students were either already there or well on their way to Aberdeen.
Among other things, Birmingham University paid around £12,000 to take a 98-strong team to the event. It led George Gandy, the long-time Loughborough coach, to say: “I didn’t think the word ‘cancel’ was in a cross-country runner’s vocabulary.”
BUCS said at the time: “We believe teams put themselves at risk by running in conditions where it was unclear what was underfoot, as well as following aspects of a course which had not been risk-assessed or had qualified officials or first-aid facilities on hand.
“We appreciate that cross-country is a rigorous athletics event, but for those walking the course on Friday afternoon and subsequently on the Saturday morning the conditions were considered too dangerous to go ahead.”
Sometimes extreme weather surprises everyone and shows how dangerous high winds, heavy rain or cold temperatures can be. At the 2002 English Schools Cross Country Championships in Hylands Park in Chelmsford, a huge marquee was caught in blustery winds and blew over just before the final race of the day, with one athlete hospitalised and others treated for shock, minor cuts and bruises, although luckily no-one was seriously hurt.
Then there is the infamous 1972 English National Cross Country Championships at Sutton Park near Birmingham where there were numerous cases of hypothermia and an official died on the way home due to a heart attack thought to have been brought on by the cold. Conditions at the start of the day were fine but a fierce storm unexpectedly blew over the area during the day, causing carnage.
Given the nature of the challenges affecting event organisers, we approached the governing bodies for comment. England Athletics said: “At England Athletics, the safety of athletes, runners, officials and spectators is paramount. We are enormously grateful to the diligent work of our event providers – many of whom are volunteers – and work tirelessly to ensure the smooth and safe delivery of events for all.
“Planning and organising events often involves making tough decisions, especially when it comes to cancellations or postponements. These decisions are not always as simple as just the condition of the course, though that can certainly play a major role if it’s flooded, frozen, or has fallen trees for example. Other factors such as agreements with venues or landowners, requirements of event insurance, the condition of car parking areas, and broader transport issues can also come into play. That’s why it’s so important for race organisers to use their risk assessments as a guide for making these decisions. These assessments take a complete view of all potential risks and help ensure decisions are made with safety, fairness and the overall event experience in mind.
“While cancellations or postponements can be disappointing, and cause disruptions in the fixtures calendar, they are always made with the best interests of participants, spectators, and everyone involved in the competition.”
NE Harrier League (David Hewitson)
Of course it is not just high-profile national events that are affected. Rarely a week goes by when parkrun doesn’t suffer at least some cancellations. With their races unfolding in the far north-east of England, the Start Fitness North Eastern Harrier League has also faced its share of event cancellations or postponements in recent winters.
Vicki Thompson, secretary of the league, says: “Yes, we’re increasingly hampered by the weather. It’s a combination of factors, even going back 20 years we had 20 to 30 senior women taking part, but at one of our most recent fixtures we had 342 women and 396 men. Add in all of the juniors and it makes car parking a weighty factor when arranging venues. We need parking for around 500-600 vehicles, so it’s a victim of its own popularity.
“This season our cancellations, or postponements really, were down to one car park being underwater and the other date was the weekend of the orange weather warning for heavy snow, making access to the site difficult. In previous years our car parking problems were mainly down to waterlogged areas.
“We haven’t cancelled an event due to course conditions and, though we had a massive lake appear overnight at one venue, the event still went ahead with a re-routed course.
“Thankfully most competitors are pretty understanding when we have to say an event can’t go ahead due to safety concerns. There are some runners who were around ‘back in the day’ when the events would have probably gone ahead, but they had the ability to park up wherever, and not really worry about overloading the local area with cars.”
A recent online poll by AW asked athletes and coaches to tell us how many planned competitions or races had been called off or postponed in the past 12 months. A total of 44 per cent replied to say “at least one”, with 24 per cent suggesting they had suffered “several cancellations” and 32 per cent saying they had not encountered any cancellations.
Not surprisingly, athletics isn’t the only sport affected, either. The Football Association estimates that around 120,000 games are lost each season due to weather-related problems, with three in four fans affected. In the last decade an estimated 13,000 overs of cricket have been lost every season and nearly two thirds of golfers reckon they have experienced extreme weather associated with climate change.
Chris Boardman, chairman of Sport England, said: “Climate change and sport are intrinsically connected. Whether it’s flooded pitches, water quality or extreme heat, few things have such an ability to depress physical activity. The status quo is no longer an option. We must tackle this seriously, quickly and most importantly, together.”
One thing’s for sure, event cancellations are unlikely to go away. According to the Met Office, winters in the UK in 2070 will be up to 30 per cent wetter than they were in 1990 and rainfall could be up to 25 per cent more intense.
So what are the conclusions? In athletics, it appears event organisers are often at the mercy of landowners such as local councils, schools or facilities. Decisions on whether to cancel, therefore, are often taken out of the hands of the officials.
Events are undoubtedly better organised than they were half a century ago, but rigorous risk assessments, health and safety guidelines and the element of insurance has possibly led to a more cautious approach rather than the gung-ho attitude of yesteryear.
When someone’s name is written on a document as the ‘event director’ or ‘safety officer’, they will potentially be liable if an accident happens. Ultimately, organisers also have a ‘duty of care’ to ensure everyone at their event is safe. Given this, it not surprisingly breeds nervousness.
Finally, it’s clear that no event organiser ever wants to cancel. It is always a last resort.
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