The sixty-fourth Senior Women's National Cross-Country Championships took place at Newark. The course was 6km in length and described as fast and flat. Reebok sponsored the event.
Champagne awaited the winners of the team event courtesy of seven times champions Parkside (Harrow) AC. Team manager Sylvia Parker told Athletics Weekly: "I've taken a bottle of bubbly every year we've been defending the title to pass it on to our successors - and we've finished up toasting ourselves ... until now." Parkside were without reigning individual champion Katy McCandless. Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers, the Southern champions, were hoping to improve on the previous year's silver medals.
All the drama of the race unfolded in the last kilometre, Alison Wyeth the four-time runner-up was willed on by the crowd who were hoping to see her victorious. With 1km to go Wyeth had a thirty-metre lead on the field. American Nnenna Lynch (Oxford University) had other ideas and mounted three attacks that were repelled by Wyeth, but in the last 200 metres the 24-year-old student passed Wyeth to win by five seconds. Alison Hulley (Leeds City AC) was in third place edging 90 and 91 winner Andrea Whitcombe (Parkside AC). Nnenna Lynch told Trevor Frecknall of Athletics Weekly: "Alison pulled away midway through and I knew not to give up. Although she went ahead and looked strong, I thought, 'There's no reason I can't catch her.' With 300 metres to go I pulled alongside, but she surged ahead again. I'm pretty confident of my kick but I know Alison has a fine finish too. But I kept pushing." Alison Wyeth added "I can't believe it. I thought I'd pulled away. "Once I came off the dead ground into the finish area, my legs died."
Months later Nnenna Lynch became the first athlete ever to have an English National cross-country title taken away. Lynch was disqualified because the American student was not registered as a foreign athlete with the British Athletic Federation by Oxford University AC. The individual title was awarded to Alison Wyeth who had to wait until September to receive her gold medal.
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