Steeplechase......

Watching the Olympics tonight with The Professor, we wondered about the origin of The Steeplechase....

OK, we thought, it must have come from the horserace, when it was run between olde English villages. You can just imagine the race from one village steeple to the next, horses bounding over dry-stone dykes and thundering across farm fields.

Even the distance (3000 metres) is almost consistant with the distance between these villages. Probably.

So it makes sense (almost) to modern athletes that a Steeplechase would be a middle-distance race, including jumps over solid barriers.

Our question is this, though.....

What do French call 'The Steeplechase'?

Is it translated literally ('La Chass de Steeple'? Crikey, Babelfish translates it as 'La Course d'obstacles'! To me that says 'Obstacle Race'! Do you think they also do a 'Course du Sac'? Or even 'La Course D'Oeufs Et De Cuillère'?).

Or do they have another name for it, like the French equivalent of 'The 3000 Metres with lots of jumps, except for one big one that's a bit wet'......


And what's it called in other languages....?


Trust me, our evening conversations are often like this.........