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Great Court Run
The Great Court Run involves attempting running around Great Court within the length of time that it takes the College clock to strike the hour of twelve, including the preparatory chimes and the two sets of twelve. (The clock strikes each hour twice.) The course is 341 metres long, and the length of time between the start and the finish of the chimes is about 43 seconds, although this varies according to the state of winding and atmospheric conditions. It is customary for athletically-inclined members of Trinity to attempt the run every year at noon on the day of the Matriculation Dinner.
The Great Court Run forms a central scene in the film
Chariots of Fire (David Puttnam, 1981) (although it was not in fact filmed at Trinity).
In October 1988 the race was recreated for charity by Britain's two foremost middle-distance runners at that time, Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram. The decathlete Daley Thompson was a reserve. The runners restricted themselves to a course dictated by the the flagstones between the cobbles, and hence had to turn very sharply at each corner. Coe won, getting round in 45.52 seconds. The runners started when the clock began to chime the quarters, and the final chime was dying away as Coe crossed the line.
On 20 October 2007 Sam Dobin, a second year undergraduate reading Economics, made it round within the sound of the final chime, with a time of 42.77 seconds. The course taken by the runners of that year took was slightly different to that of 1988 in that competitors ran on the cobbles as well as the flagstones.
A
movie (WMV file, 7.8MB) was made of a mini-version (held for children) of the Great Court Run in which the participants in this Run can also be seen in the background.
A 360° panorama of Great Court can be found on the
BBC Cambridgeshire website.
©2006 Trinity College, Cambridge.
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