This year marks a special anniversary for the Senior Guides race at an iconic fell race.
Grasmere Lakeland Sports and Show has been running since the mid-19th century – but the first year women were allowed to tackle the event’s fell race was 40 years ago.
The first time women were allowed to tackle the tough 294-metre ascent up Butter Crag, and the rather fast descent back down, was in 1984, when the winner was Lord Lonsdale’s daughter, Caroline Lowther.
Prior to that, this traditional Cumbrian countryside hill race had been the domain of only the men. In the 1890s, the star was Tom Conchie. By the 1950s, Bill Teasdale was dominating the blue ribbon event in the fell running programme at Grasmere.
After that era came one in which Fred Reeves and Tommy Sedgwick battled it out and shared the spoils between them in the years 1969 to 1979, in what became a compelling personal contest to behold.
But this was also the time in which women’s sporting heroes, such as Billie Jean King in the world of tennis, began to campaign for equality in sport, even staging a Battle of the Sexes tennis match to highlight how women’s sporting prowess should be taken seriously.
Over the past 40 years, there have been many women recording times better than male competitors and their participation has made the race far more exciting for all spectators. The Senior Guides race now follows the format of all other races, in which both boys and girls aged under 17 compete against each other in various age categories.
The current women’s record in the Senior Guides race is held by Victoria Wilkinson and was set in 2017. It stands at 15 minutes and 5 seconds and has so far eluded any other woman competitor. So too has the men’s record, set by Fred Reeves in 1978 and standing at 12 minutes and 21 seconds.
Current Senior Guides race title holder for the women’s event, 18-year-old Charlotte Rawstron, only graduated from the under-17s last year and achieved a time of 16 minutes and three seconds in her first ever Senior Guides race.
She came home as the first woman, in 26th place overall, in which 157 finished.
Charlotte said: “There’s not that much of a gap between the front of us and the front of the men’s race now. And to hear that women have only been able to do it for the past 40 years is amazing.”
As the 40th anniversary of the race approaches, Charlotte, who has competed for England internationally, at a youth level and who runs for Skyrac in Yorkshire, will be training hard as usual but believes it would take a near perfect performance to beat Victoria Wilkinson’s record.
Charlotte says that Tommy Sedgwick – one of the iconic male fell runners who did not compete against women in his day – has been one of her main inspirations, having encouraged her running since she was a young teenager and always stopping to have a
Grasmere Lakeland Sports and Show, takes place on Sunday August 25. Buy tickets at www.grasmeresports.com
