The history in summary

• The first race for male competitors was held at 8 pm on the 6th of September 1862. It was initially a ten mile steeplechase
• The first race for female competitors was held in 1986. It was a scratch race starting ten minutes before the male race.
• By 1993, both male and female competitors were handicapped alongside each other.
• The race has had several postponements due to world wars, foot and mouth disease and covid-19. While the race was 163 years old in 2025, the race was the 146th edition.
• For many years the race was an event hosted by Hallam Football club, modern editions are hosted by the Hallamshire Harriers athletics club.
• In 1925 the race was registered with the Amateur Athletics Association, ending professional participation and gambling.

The history in detail

Fragments of history of the Hallam Chase are available online from several sources. Having first run the race in the early 2010s, I was aware of the main details. The race was very old, it was handicapped, thousands of people used to line the course and bet on the outcome.

It wasn’t until I took over the race however, that I got access to some of the finer details. Amongst the documents and fragments I inherited was a manuscript written by Malcolm Douthwaite, a long time associate and chronicler of the race. It was evident that the manuscript had been developed over many years with additional details and information added over time. The latest version I could find, written in 2009, seems to be the definitive version and contains countless history, anecdotes and records alongside one another. I have extracted some of this to garnish the website, I have tried to chronicle the historical records in their own section and, so others can read it I have scanned in this manuscript for sharing here.

The document is scanned as a pdf and I have attempted to use open source tools so the text of the document can be searched but be aware this was an imperfect process. If you do nothing else, I implore you to read the author’s brief biography. The race is indebted to Malcolm’s efforts.