Michael Ferguson hopes to join a small but elite group of Aberdeen students to have won the Scottish universities and colleges cross country title when he makes his final appearance in the annual championship race at Garscube estate, Glasgow tomorrow.
Only five Aberdeen university representatives have struck gold in the men’s race since WW2, the most recent being David Vernon who won on home ground at Balgownie playing fields in 2013.
Sandy Moss also won at Balgownie in 1996 while the only other winners have been Dick Kendall (1947), Alastair Wood (1956) and Don Ritchie (1972).
Throughout that whole period Aberdeen has never won the team competition which has been dominated by Edinburgh with 28 wins over the past 30 years.
Ferguson who was runner-up to Glasgow’s Lachlan Oates when he last appeared in the championships, in 2014, is keen to add his name to the roll of honour but is making no bold predictions as to how it might shape up.
He said: “Obviously it would be good to win but it is very difficult to know how things will go. I don’t know who else is likely to be there and I don’t really know anything about the course and how well it might suit me.
“My training has been going well and I’m happy with the way things are going at the moment so we’ll just have to wait to see what happens.”
Ferguson, who is studying for a postgraduate teaching qualification, showed good form when recording the fourth fastest time of the day in helping Aberdeen AAC finish second in last weekend’s Scottish cross country relay championships at Cumbernauld.
Great Britain junior international Anna Macfadyen (Forres Harriers) has decided not to compete in the women’s race at Garscube on Saturday.
The Kinloss athlete, who recently began studying for a degree in French and Law at Edinburgh University, has already won two gold medals with her student team recently and has decided to take a break ahead of competing in the Scottish 4km championships next weekend.
Macfadyen, who represented Great Britain n the under-20 women’s race at the world cross country championships in Uganda earlier in the year, was in the Edinburgh side which won the Scottish and East District cross country relay titles last month.
Zoe Bates and Isla Scott-Pearce will lead the Aberdeen University team while Hannah Cameron is one of the leading Robert Gordon University contenders.
