Race Date: Saturday 17th January 2026
After finishing sixth in the Yorkshire’s last year, Abbie Haworth was unable to take up a place at the Inter-Counties in March so was more keen than ever to do well at this year’s event at Lightwater Family Adventure Park near Ripon. This has hosted nearly every edition of the championships since at least 2013 with a break in 2021 due to Covid and an outing to Kiveton Park in 2022. The lumpy course, 7450m for women, 9400m for men, is therefore well known to the regulars although the start was in a slightly different place this year.
Talking with Abbie after the race we asked her about strategy. As the race began at what was described as a “steady” pace, with those present the plan was simply to stick with the leading bunch for as long as possible. Jemima Elgood (Nidd Valley) was always the favourite but as the race unfolded the field thinned out with Abbie still in second place although a fast finish from Ruby Sunman (Holmfirth) put the pressure on. Ruby, who had a baby only twelve months ago, is well known to some of Steel City’s women as she finished second in the South Yorkshire League running for Barnsley. Despite her usual modesty Abbie was obviously delighted to get the silver medal but by Tuesday evening when we saw her it was back to normal with an old fashioned lactate threshold session.
Over recent years we seem to have become blasé about our women’s successes at the County Championships. Only a couple of weeks ago Caroline Brock picked up a bronze medal running for Derbyshire but Abbie’s silver medal trumps that. These are glory days and Steel City should savour these moments.
Abbie is up with the leading bunch just behind eventual winner Jemima Elgood. The yellow vest of third placed woman Ruby Sunman can just be seen rounding the bend.
Who would be a team manager? Richard Pegg was bemoaning the lack of entries from the club as the closing date for entries for the Yorkshire’s approached with only eight actually committed to run which he put put down to a clash with a popular Sheffield event plus certain individuals sneaking off to run for different counties. But who would be a race director? With the traditional date of the first week in January unavailable at Lightwater the week after, Saturday 10th January, was chosen. Queue snow and ice and on the day before the race itself it was cancelled at the request of Lightwater due to safety reasons. Somehow the race was rescheduled for the following week which involved organising officials, suppliers, first aid cover, audio systems, chip timing and so on plus dealing with a busy inbox down to generously re-opening entries to allow refunds and accept late entries. The printers then had to get the extra numbers delivered.
Come race day, Steel City did well to field a complete team of four women and finish in sixth place when so many other teams could not muster a full team of four finishers.
| Pos | Name | Time |
| 2 | Abbie Haworth | 27:22 |
| 52 | Lucy Broom | 36:57 |
| 56 | Kate Scott | 39:40 |
| 57 | Karen Clarke | 40:01 |
Alex Ball climbs one of the various bumps in the course shod with rather brand new looking spikes.
In the men’s race, the duo of Alex Ball and cross country stalwart Ian Stinson made sure that Steel City’s men maintained a presence with, again, clubs struggling to field a complete team.
| Pos | Name | Time |
| 64 | Alex Ball | 38:34 |
| 76 | Ian Stinson | 41:34 |
Link to full results Yorkshire XC Champs 2026
Winner of the women’s race was Jemima Elgood (Nidd Valley) 26:54 whilst the men’s race was won by Ed Bovingdon (Leeds) 29:01. Leeds City won both the women’s and men’s team races. It would be disingenuous not to mention that, with the quickly rescheduled date, numbers were down on 2025 (60/82 women and 91/163 men) but there’s nothing about that on any of the medals so enough said.
Gold seems to be the colour if you want a podium finish. L-R Ruby Sunman (Holmfirth), Jemima Elgood (Nidd) and Abbie Haworth (Steel City)
