Lord Burghley (CUAC) wins the Olympic 400m hurdles title (© World Athletics Heritage)
Plaque name: Cambridge University Athletic Club
Location: The Pavilion, Cambridge University Athletics Track, Wilberforce Road Sports Ground, 18 Adams Road, Cambridge, CB3 9AD
Plaque awarded: 17/05/2024
Reason: Plaque Category – Competition
There is an important historical link between World Athletics, formerly known as the International Amateur Athletic Association (IAAF), and Cambridge University Athletic Club (CUAC).
David Cecil, Lord Burghley, the 6th Marquess of Exeter who was educated at Magdalene College and is a former president of the CUAC as well as being the 1928 Olympic 400m hurdles champion, was president of the IAAF from 1946 to 1976. Lord Burghley was World Athletics’ second president and fellow Briton Lord Sebastian Coe is now the sixth president.
The CUAC was founded in 1857 and is one of the, if not the, oldest athletics clubs in the world.
Yet the decades of the 1850s and 1860s when organised athletics competitions began to be developed remain shrouded in myth and conjecture.
What is unarguable is that the CUAC was among a small group of fledgling sports organisations in the UK and USA which pioneered the development of modern-day athletics.
The club helped lay the organisational foundations, the formats and rules of many of the athletics disciplines upon which today’s international sport of athletics was built.
The CUAC has made and continues to make an immeasurable contribution to the development of a sport which at its heights at the Olympic Games and the World Athletics Championships is watched by billions around the world.