World Marathon record holder Paul Tergat of Kenya will headline this year's 8th Media Maratón Bogotá, to be held in the Colombian capital of Bogotá on 29 July 2007.

Challenging Tergat, will be fellow countrymen, Patrick Makau who has a 58:56 best time for the half marathon, Joseph Kahugu (a 2:07:59  marathon best), and Isaac Macharia, who ran 1:00.53 last year in Luxembourg. Other names in the line-up include William Salgado Gomes (BRA), Otavio Santos Pinheiro (BRA),  and Teodoro Vega (MEX).

The women’s division also has a strong line-up. Susan Chepkemei of Kenya, the former three-time World Half Marathon silver medallist who is is women's event record holder (1:10:39 in 2004) tops the bill. In Bogotá, Chepkemei will face Claudia Camrago (ARG) who lives in the USA, Tatiana Aryasova (RUS), Neriah Asiba (KEN) and Lioudmila Kortchaguina who won her third Canadian marathon title at the ING Ottawa Marathon this past May. Kortchaguina will stay and train in Bogotá to ready herself for the World Championships Marathon in Osaka.
  
The international elite field will join 45,000 athletes participating in the half marathon and accompanying 10K, making it one of the world's largest road races, and certainly the largest at very high altitude - Bogotá is 2600m above sea-level.
  
Tergat, the former holder of the World record for the the half marathon (59:17 in Stramilano, 1998) and a two-time IAAF World Half Marathon champion (1999 & 2000), is expected to threaten the men's event record of 1:03:51 set back in 2001 by Peruvian José Castillo.
  
While in Bogotá, Tergat will take the opportunity to promote the United Nation's World Food Programme, for which he works as an "Ambassador Against Hunger".
  
"My career can be traced back to the World Food Programme's school feeding programme in Kenya in my youth, which enabled me to attend school and later go ahead to discover and develop my running career, just after high school.  The opportunity to act as an Ambassador Against Hunger lets me register my appreciation for it's impact on my life, while at the same time enabling other children to benefit from it in the future."

Victah Sailer for the IAAF