Women winning outright

[anthonykay]

I think you have to be careful because fell running is a tad niche and fields are small.

At BBH when we were 3 times junior fell winners, we had a young lady who won the U11 and then U13 Cross Challenge at Liverpool 4 years running as well as the overall Cross Challenge series on at least one occasion.
She was a multiple FRA Junior Champion and went on to win England Junior vests.

She never beat a male junior in such races. Occasionally at a local fun run she might. Between age 10 and 14 she was among the top 10 female endurance athletes at 1200m up to 5K.
n
Young Bleu might be in the top 20 nationally in her age group, and the young man who pipped her maybe not be inside the top 100.

Yes, although it is not all that rare for a girl to win a junior fell race, the numbers of runners are rather small, so it does just need a top girl to be in a field where none of the top boys are running (which also applies to all the senior examples mentioned in this thread). But it was very striking to see that video from Coniston Gullies with five girls coming past before the first boy appeared.

One thing that is very noticeable in results lists of junior races is how numbers of boys and girls are roughly equal in the younger age groups, with the proportion of girls then falling off as you go up the age range.

[anthonykay]

U11's at Weaver Hills FRA Junior Championship race: first three finishers were all female, in a field of 10 boys and 13 girls. But go up one age group to U13's, and there were no girls among the first ten finishers. Which all probably goes to reinforce earlier comments about small fields.

Looking at total numbers of runners in each of the age groups is also interesting. Numbers of runners increase with age from the U9's to the U15's, but then drop as you go up to U17's and U19's: 50 runners at U15, only 14 at U19. Young runners lose interest as they become independent of parents; but then, my interests after I went to university were completely different from what I did when I was at school.