Callum Elson (born 31 December 1998) is a British middle-distance and cross-country runner. He won a silver medal in the road mile at the

2023 World Athletics Road Running Championships The 2023 World Athletics Road Running Championships are scheduled to take place in Riga, Latvia, on . As the inaugural World Athletics Road Running Championships, they will include the World Athletics Half Marathon Championships, which were las ...

Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...

Career

A Cambridge and Coleridge athlete, Elson ran as a youngster and finished 16th in the English Schools Cross Country Champs in 2017, but while at the University of Durham concentrated on playing football and only began running seriously again during the COVID-19 Pandemic. He studied for an MBA at American International College in

Springfield, Massachusetts Springfield is a city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States, and the seat of Hampden County. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers: the western Westfield River, the ...

and returned to the UK having won NCAA division II mile (indoor) and 1500m (outdoor) titles in 2022. He represented Britain for the first time at the

European Cross Country Championships The European Cross Country Championships is an annual international cross country running competition. Organised by the European Athletic Association, it is the area championships for the region and is held in December each year. The championships ...

in Turin, Italy in December 2022. In February 2023, he was selected to compete for Great Britain at the

2023 World Athletics Cross Country Championships The 2023 World Athletics Cross Country Championships took place on 18 February 2023 in Bathurst, Australia. It was the event's 44th edition and the second time after Auckland in 1988 that the championships were held in Oceania. In March 2020 th ...

in Bathurst, New South Wales. Elson ran a new area record time of 3:56.41 to win the silver medal in the road mile at the

. He was selected for the

2023 European Cross Country Championships The 2023 European Cross Country Championships was the 29th edition of the cross country running competition for European athletes. It was held on 10 December 2023 in Laeken Park in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium staged the European Cross Country Ch ...

in Brussels in December 2023. On 18 February 2024, he was runner-up at the

2024 British Indoor Athletics Championships The 2024 British Indoor Athletics Championships were the national indoor track and field competition for British athletes, held on 17 and 18 February 2024 at Arena Birmingham. The competition served as a qualification event for the 2024 World A ...

in Birmingham, over 1500 metres. He was selected for the

2024 World Athletics Indoor Championships 4 (four) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 3 and preceding 5. It is the smallest semiprime and composite number, and is considered unlucky in many East Asian cultures. In mathematics Four is the smallest c ...

in Glasgow.

Personal life

In the early 2020s, Elson began recording his athletics journey on social media using the moniker "The Distance Project". A football fan, he is a support of Leeds United.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Elson, Callum 1998 births Living people English male middle-distance runners British male middle-distance runners Alumni of Collingwood College, Durham