Grace and Ryan win golds at Scottish Student XC Champs

Tuesday 18th November 2025

Glasgow Uni gather at Scottish Students XC (photo via social media)

On a cold and bright Sunday in November, Scottish Students assembled in St Andrews for the annual XC Championships.

There were 192 entries from 14 of Scotland’s Universities and Colleges.

Passing over the potential of a ‘Chariots of Fire’ run on the beach, Craigtoun Park was chosen as the venue.

The host club, with assistance from referee Ron Morrison, crafted an interesting (lots of turns) and fast (fairly flat) 2km lap for the competition. As noted in the race briefing, the park had never before hosted a Cross Country race.

Men and Women both ran four laps of the park for a race distance of 8km and plenty of opportunities for supporters to cheer on their team.

The front of the Women’s race quickly had a leading pack of five runners: Grace Whelan (Strathclyde), Zoe Rennie ( Edinburgh), Isla Hedley ( Stirling), Alice Jones (Stirling) and Skye Rae (Strathclyde). Grace and Zoe maintained their podium positions throughout the race with Alice Jones passing Isla Hedley on the last lap to claim the bronze.

The Women’s Team competition was also closely contested with Strathclyde taking the Gold with 29 points ahead of Edinburgh and Stirling both on 33 points. Edinburgh were awarded the Silver on countback as their fourth runner was ahead of the Stirling fourth runner.

Host club St Andrews Uni (photo via social media)

In the Men’s race by the end of the first lap there was a leading group of 10 runners who had pulled away from the chasing pack.

Ryan Martin (Stirling) leading was able to break away from the group to win by a margin of 12 seconds with the remaining nine packing into the finish within the next 18 seconds.

The final placings were Ryan Martin (Stirling), Adam Brown (Aberdeen) and Logan Beagley (Heriot Watt).

Edinburgh University had four runners in the leading pack and so the Men’s team race was never in doubt as they finished with 29 points followed by Heriot-Watt with 36 points and University of Glasgow with 56 points.

The race was hosted by University of St Andrews and supported by Scottish Student Sport, Ron Morrison as Referee and members of Fife AC.

Full results are available at

https://liveresults.kitst.co.uk/#sssxcwomen25.csv

https://liveresults.kitst.co.uk/#sssxcmen25.csv

With thanks to Ted Finch