Winter Downs 200 2023

Ry Webb won the first Winter Downs 200 in 49:15:50 and Laura Swanton-Rouvelin won the women's race in 63:47:14. Samuel Skinner was second man in 53:57:06 and Andrew Churchill third in 55:06:52; Sophie Bennett was second woman in 69:22:37 and Ally Whitlock third in 71:07:43.

Skinner led for most of the race. He went to the front on the Vanguard Way inside the first marathon and was still almost an hour clear at the third checkpoint, 136 miles in, before Webb closed along the South Downs Way and went past at Farnham with a marathon to run. Webb had grown up on that last stretch of the North Downs Way. Skinner got in on his feet but only just: he took a wrong turn approaching the finish and had to be sent back, then lost his bearings altogether on Box Hill with a mile to go.

Swanton-Rouvelin ran ahead from the first climb out of Juniper Hall and never gave the lead back, reaching the second checkpoint at 92 miles in 22:42 with something like ten miles in hand. Whitlock and Bennett ran the early stages together and swapped second place twice, at Housedean Farm and again inside the last 15 miles.

Centurion signed off 94 starters and 56 of them finished, a far better rate than it had expected on ground it called a quagmire in places, with 100 metres of knee-deep standing water across the Vanguard Way at Haxted. Thirty ran the whole loop uncrewed. Twenty-one women started and thirteen finished, and Mel Horley was the only one of them to go round unsupported, in 86:44.