Cross Country Running
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Cross Country Running trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Cross country is running at its most stripped back: a start line, a few miles of grass, mud and climbs, and a team result that depends on every runner who finishes. The sport grew out of nineteenth-century English schoolboy games and now stretches from high school invitationals to world championships. This quiz covers the whole course. There are questions on how a meet is scored and marked, the vocabulary of training and racing, the sport's brief and dramatic Olympic history, the great American college programmes and high school championships, and the champions who made their names over the country before conquering the track and the marathon. It is written for runners, coaches and parents who want a quiz for the team bus, and for anyone curious about the sport. Most questions are pitched so that a first-year runner can get them with a little thought, with a handful of tougher ones for the people who know their history.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In a cross country meet where finishing places are added up, which team total wins the race?
The lowest score
The lowest score wins, because each runner earns points equal to their finishing place. Only a team's first five finishers count, so five solid runners beat one lone star.
Q 02Which word, borrowed from a breed of hunting dog, appears in the names of many cross country clubs?
Harriers
Harriers were hounds bred to trail hares, and early cross country runners chasing a human 'hare' borrowed the name. At Eton College the chasing pack was called the Beagles instead.
Q 03Cross country running was dropped from Olympic athletics after 1924 but survives inside which multi-sport event?
Modern pentathlon
Modern pentathlon ends with a run, the last of its five disciplines after fencing, swimming and the rest. Since 1928 that has been the only cross country running at the Olympics.
Q 04Which city's 1924 Olympic cross country race, run in a heatwave, saw only 15 of 38 starters finish?
Paris
Paris staged the race in heat above 40 °C, beside a power plant giving off fumes. So many runners collapsed that officials dropped cross country from the Olympics for good.
Q 05Which 2015 Disney film tells the true story of a 1987 California high school cross country team?
McFarland, USA
McFarland, USA stars Kevin Costner as coach Jim White, who leads runners from a mainly Latino high school to a state championship.
Q 06Which lightweight cross country racing shoes carry metal pins screwed into the forefoot for grip in mud?
Spikes
Spikes can be as long as 25 mm for a muddy course and as short as 6 mm on firm ground. Where a course has long paved stretches, runners may choose rubber-soled racing flats.
Q 07Van Cortlandt Park, home to a famous cross country course opened in 1914, lies in which New York City borough?
The Bronx
The Bronx is home to Van Cortlandt Park, which has been called the most storied cross country course in the United States and has hosted NCAA championship races.
Q 08In which season do American high schools and colleges contest cross country, ending with the NCAA championships?
Fall
Fall is cross country season in American schools, and the NCAA championships are typically held in November. England's national championships come in late February instead.
Q 09Which Finnish runner won the individual Olympic cross country gold medals in both 1920 and 1924?
Paavo Nurmi
Paavo Nurmi stayed unbeaten in cross country races through his whole 14-year career. He also led Finland to the team gold at both of those Games.
Q 10Which nation's men won the senior team title at the World Cross Country Championships 18 years in a row from 1986?
Kenya
Kenya took the senior men's 12 km team race every year from 1986 through 2003. Between them, it and Ethiopia won every senior men's team title from 1981 to 2017.
Q 11Which Ethiopian won both the short and long races at the World Cross Country Championships five years running?
Kenenisa Bekele
Kenenisa Bekele did the double every year from 2002 to 2006, a feat no other runner managed even once. A sixth long-course win in 2008 took him to eleven senior titles.
Q 12Which University of Oregon star, later the subject of two 1990s feature films, won three NCAA cross country titles?
Steve Prefontaine
Steve Prefontaine won in 1970, 1971 and 1973. As an eighth-grader he had watched the high school team jog past the football field and thought their running looked mundane.
Q 13Which Norwegian, winner of nine New York City Marathons, was the first woman to win five World Cross Country titles?
Q 21Which overuse injury common among runners is known to doctors as medial tibial stress syndrome?
Shin splints
Shin splints are pain along the inside edge of the tibia, caused by inflamed tissue. Dancers, gymnasts and military personnel are commonly affected as well.
Q 22Which pacing term means running the second half of a race faster than the first half?
Negative split
A negative split is the reverse of a positive split, in which the first half of the race is the quicker one. Even splitting, a third approach, aims at one precise lap time throughout.
Q 23After the finish line of a cross country race without chip timing, runners file through which narrow roped lane?
The chute
Grete Waitz
Grete Waitz won those cross country titles between 1978 and 1983. In New York in 1979 she became the first woman to run a marathon in under two and a half hours.
Q 14Which South African-born runner, famous for racing barefoot, won the 1985 and 1986 World Cross Country titles?
Zola Budd
Zola Budd was the youngest winner the race had ever had when she beat Ingrid Kristiansen in 1985. She mainly trained barefoot as well as racing that way.
Q 15Which future marathon world record holder from Britain won World Cross Country titles in 2001 and 2002?
Paula Radcliffe
Paula Radcliffe had already won the junior world title in 1992, weeks after a bad asthma attack. Her marathon record of 2:15:25 then stood for 16 years.
Q 16Which marathon great, later first to run the distance under two hours, won the 2003 world junior cross country title?
Eliud Kipchoge
Eliud Kipchoge made that junior race his first individual world title. He set a world junior record for 5000 m the same year, long before he turned to the marathon.
Q 17Which double Olympic 1500 m champion pushed, as World Athletics president, to add cross country to the Winter Olympics?
Sebastian Coe
Sebastian Coe argued the move would give Africa a proper presence at the Winter Games. His own first race against rival Steve Ovett was a schools cross country in 1972.
Q 18Which British runner, a four-time Olympic track champion, won the European Cross Country title in Italy in 2006?
Mo Farah
Mo Farah took that title in San Giorgio su Legnano, six years before his first Olympic golds. He went on to win both the 5,000 m and 10,000 m at two straight Games.
Q 19On a US high school cross country course marked with coloured flags, a red flag tells runners to do what?
Turn left
Turn left is the red flag's order, and runners must pass on the flag's right-hand side. Yellow flags mark the opposite turn and blue flags mean carry straight on.
Q 20Which name is given to a cross country team's sixth and seventh runners, who score no points but push rivals back?
Displacers
Displacers occupy finishing places that would otherwise go to rival scorers, raising the other team's total. Any runner beyond a team's seventh is removed from the scoring altogether.
The chute holds finishers in the order they crossed the line until every place is recorded. Races timed by transponder chip can use an open finish corral instead.
Q 24Which Oregon city hosts Nike Cross Nationals, the unofficial team championship of American high school cross country?
Portland
Portland staged the first meet in 2004 on a horse racing track, and the course later moved to a golf course. Teams race under club names because the event has no federation sanction.
Q 25Which university, long coached by John McDonnell, holds the record of eleven NCAA Division I men's cross country titles?
Arkansas
Arkansas hired McDonnell, a native of Ireland, as its cross country coach in 1972. Counting indoor and outdoor track too, his teams went on to win 40 NCAA championships.
Q 26Which Pennsylvania university has won a record nine NCAA Division I women's cross country team titles?
Villanova
Villanova won six of those titles in a row, from 1989 to 1994. Its runners have also taken nine individual championships, more than any other school.
Q 27Which Indiana city, nicknamed Cross Country Town USA, is home to the LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course?
Terre Haute
Terre Haute's course was built on a reclaimed coal mine and designed specifically for cross country. It has hosted the NCAA Division I championships many times.
Q 28Chris Lear's book Running with the Buffaloes follows which university's cross country team through its 1998 season?
Colorado
Colorado's season is told like a journal, with each chapter covering a day's run. The book centres on coach Mark Wetmore and the team's top runner, Adam Goucher.
Q 29Which English school's cross country club, known as the Hunt, is called the world's oldest, with roots in 1819?
Shrewsbury
Shrewsbury School's boys are said to have started running as hares and hounds after their headmaster refused them a fox-hunting club. The Hunt's written records go back to 1831.
Q 30Which two universities first met in a cross country Varsity Match in 1880, a fixture hosted by Thames Hare and Hounds?
Oxford and Cambridge
Oxford and Cambridge race each other after the end of the autumn term. Their hosts, Thames Hare and Hounds, are the oldest adult cross country club in the world.