Megacross and Cuppers 2026

News / Selection races

With the days growing colder and the fields getting muddier, cross country season is well and truly upon us. Last weekend both universities held their first races of the season. Oxford staged their inter-college Cuppers race, which doubled as a match against the RAF, while Cambridge held their Megacross on Coldham’s Common.

Oxford: Cuppers

Will Anthony produced a dominant performance to beat last year’s Cuppers and Varsity champion, Christopher Parker. Anthony, who hails from New Zealand, previously studied at the University of Virginia in the USA, where he finished 18th in the 10,000m at the 2024 NCAA Championships and earlier this year ran 28:02 for 10,000m at Stanford. He looks a very strong replacement for Olympian Jared Ward, who completed his two years at Oxford last season, for a team looking to defend both the Varsity and BUCS titles.

Christopher Parker (Captain), who had a breakout season last winter, winning the Varsity Match and qualifying for the GB Universities team after finishing sixth at the BUCS Championships, was the only undergraduate in the top eight and came home second in 30:51. Following in third was Jack Johnson, who had a strong race after returning from a stress fracture over the summer.

With only eight places in the Blues team and a few top performers not racing, including Tom Wood, Alex Gruen and Max Selby, everything is still to play for lower down the order. Selby joins from the University of Nottingham and helped Tonbridge to the South of England Road Relays title in September. Racing was tight from Justin Hickey in fourth to Alex Poulston in tenth, with just 56 seconds between them. Hickey is new to Oxford this year, having previously studied at Brown University in the USA, where he was the team’s top finisher at the 2024 NCAA Northeast Regional. Gareth Harcombe is also in his first year at Oxford, starting a DPhil after a few years working since leaving the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

Martin Falle, who trains in Exeter with five-time Blue Jamie Parkinson, was the first fresher home in ninth and will be looking to become the first Oxford fresher to make the Blues team since John Spill in 2016. Either side of him were Benjy McCartney and Alex Poulston, both Blues last year, who will be looking to improve over the coming weeks to earn a place in the top eight and return to the Common.

Rebecca Flaherty showed her class to win the women’s race comfortably in 22:26, over a minute and a half clear of the rest of the field. Flaherty, a GB international, finished third on her Varsity debut in 2024 but missed last year’s match after being selected for the GB U23 team at the European Cross Country Championships in Portugal. She will be looking to qualify again this year at the Liverpool Cross Challenge on 28 November, which doubles as the European trials, just a week before the Varsity Match.

Behind her, Ella Davey looks in strong form after her debut year last season, when she finished third in the Varsity Match and anchored Oxford to victory at the UK Ekiden. She came home second in 24:04, just ahead of fresher Tilly Black in third. Beth Rawlinson, who has moved up the order in each of her three Varsity Matches (14th, 10th and then 4th last year), was fourth, with Anissa Alloula, winner of last year’s Turtles race, fifth.

Harriet Clayton, ninth for the Turtles last year, looks to be improving year on year and was seventh, as she tries to make the Blues team for the first time. Amelia Coleman (8th) and Sophie Glencross (10th), both Blues last year, completed the top ten. Naomi Kingston, third in the 2023 Varsity Match, missed the last 12 months with a stress fracture and is rebuilding her fitness. She was 12th here and should improve throughout the term. Pembroke took the women’s college title, with Davey, Caitlyn Tan and Coleman all in the top eight.

Cambridge: Megacross

The Megacross course is a flat one, taking in sports pitches, grass and woodland trails. The men raced just over 9km and the women about 4km. In the men’s race Connor Morgan, ninth for the Spartans last year, looked very strong, dropping everyone around him with 4km to go to win in 30:17. Tim Bongaerts, a Blue last year, came home second in 30:33, ahead of Isaac Oliver.

Oliver, a U19 National Gravel Cycling Champion, has had a superb year on the bike. He was sixth in the BUCS Road Race Championships in May, won the Yorkshire U23 Classic in August with a decisive breakaway on the climbs of Upper Denby, and on 17 October took the title at the Varsity Hill Climb in Wytham Woods, Oxford. He is now looking to make the move to cross country, and by the looks of things has taken to it well. Behind him came Dan Taylor, eighth in last year’s Blues race, and captain Elliot Heath, with Ned Gallagher-Thompson sixth as the first fresher home. With experienced Blues runners looking strong and some promising new additions, the Cambridge men’s team looks in good shape this early in the season. A few big names still at the university didn’t race, among them Max Walk, a Blue in each of the last two years and tenth in 2025, and it will be interesting to see how they fare in the selection races still to come this term.

On the women’s side, Cambridge have been boosted by the arrival of Laia Casajoana Guardia. The Spaniard raced for Oxford two years ago, finishing seventh in the 2024 Varsity Match as one of Oxford’s six scorers in a 37–47 win. Two months later she was tenth in the Women’s A race at the BUCS Cross Country Championships in Cardiff, helping Oxford’s A team to fourth, and she also ran a 10k best of 34:50 in Valencia in 2025. After a year away from the UK at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, where she studied law, and an altitude training camp in Font-Romeu over the summer, she has returned and swapped to the other side. She looks in very good shape and will be a real asset to Cambridge. Eliza Konig came home second. A fresher who has represented Scotland on the mountains and fells, she was in the U20 team at this year’s Junior Home International in Northern Ireland, where Scotland took the overall win. She and third-placed Zoha Jetha, who was injured for much of last year but now looks to be moving well, should both be strong additions to a Cambridge team looking to improve after losing 32–46 to Oxford last year. That team will be led by captain Beth Rogers, a Blue last year after running for the Cheetahs in 2024, who didn’t race at Coldham’s Common and will be amongst a few athletes to look out for in races over the coming weeks.