Boston, USA - Reigning Olympic 10,000m bronze medallist and American Record Holder Shalane Flanagan will make her 2009 debut at the Reebok Boston Indoor Games on 7 February, organisers announced today.

Flanagan, who hails from nearby Marblehead, Mass., returns to the track where she shet one of her three U.S. records. At the 2007 meet, Flanagan clocked 8:33.25 over 3000m. This year she will contest the 5000m, where she will face Ethiopian Tirunesh Dibaba, the Olympic 5000 and 10,000m champion.

[NB: It was previously reported that Dibaba would race the 3000m here, but organisers have since added a 5000m race to the schedule and have confirmed that the Ethiopian double Olympic champion will also contest the longer distance.]

Flanagan is launching her 2009 season after one of the most successful campaigns by any American women in the history of the sport.  Her 2008 season included a trip to the medal podium in Beijing with a gutsy bronze medal run in the fastest Olympic 10,000m final ever.  Her time of 30:22.22 at the Games bested her own American Record set earlier in 2008 in Palo Alto, CA. 

American middle and long distance standouts Alan Webb and Galen Rupp have also been added to the line-up.

Rupp finished his 2008 competitive season by leading his team, the University of Oregon, to victory at the NCAA Cross Country Championships in Terre Haute, IN. He also scored his first individual NCAA title at the event.  Rupp, from Portland, OR, also finished second at the 2008 US Olympic Trials in the 10,000m and went on to be the highest placing American with his 13th place finish at the Olympic Games.  

In 2007, Webb began his season at the Reebok Boston Indoor Games with a victory when he won the mile in an attention-grabbing time of 3:55.18.  That summer, Webb went on to break Steve Scott’s 25-year-old American Record in the event when he clocked 3:46.91. He will face his former college teammate Nick Willis, the reigning Olympic bronze medallist at 1500m from Beijing. 

Since the Reebok Boston Indoor Games began in 1996, more than 100 Olympic and World Championship medallists have competed in the event, which has also played host to six World Records and 29 National Records. The event has sold out for the last 5 years and is expected to do so in 2009.  

The 14th annual Reebok Boston Indoor Games is the second stop in USA Track & Field’s Visa Championship Series.

Bob Ramsak and organisers for the IAAF