News19 Mar 2007


The spectre of Ethiopian brilliance hangs over Kenya’s Mombasa ambitions

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Ethiopian athletics supporters in party mood (© AFP / Getty Images)

MonteCarloWhen the final entry deadline for the 35th IAAF World Cross Country Championships, Mombasa, Kenya (24 March) passed a week ago, all those athletes who had won last year’s individual senior titles were included. Four golds, three athletes, one country – Ethiopia!

Given the recent history of the World Cross Country Championships, the entry of the 2006 Fukuoka champions Kenenisa Bekele (two titles – men’s short and long course), Tirunesh Dibaba (women’s long course), and Gelete Burka (women’s short course) will have tempered all but the most optimistic of the 1.15 million citizens of this Indian Ocean seaport from making preparations to celebrate home victories on 24 March.

Understandably, Kenyans want to celebrate the occasion of their hosting of the World Cross Country Championships which will be the first occasion on which Kenya will host an IAAF World Athletics Series event. For a country which since the late 1960s has been at the forefront of long distance running particularly cross country, these Championships really do signal the discipline’s spiritual ‘home coming’.

However, recent history has somewhat dented the pride of the nation whose men provided an unbroken line of 18 (long course) senior team victories from 1986 to 2003 inclusive, and which has produced five-time men’s title winners John Ngugi and Paul Tergat, and Edith Masai, the three-time victor over the women’s short course.

While Kenya regained their hold on the senior men’s long course title last year, they have not won an individual senior gold medal since Edith Masai’s women’s short course victory in 2004. If we look at the women’s long course then we must flip a further ten years back to Hellen Chepngeno’s triumph in Budapest (1994). It’s not much better if we turn to the men’s category either, with Enock Koech (2001 - short) and Paul Tergat (1999 - long) being the last successes.

Arguably with the World Cross Country Championships returning to their pre-1998 format of one senior men’s race and one senior women’s race, the power of the Ethiopians and consequently the problems for the hosts are concentrated in Mombasa.

If either or both Dibaba and Burka were to have a poor day then the Ethiopians can also call upon last year’s double bronze medallist Meselech Melkamu. The 21-year-old, a former World Junior Cross Country champion, is in the form of her life having gone below the World Indoor 3000m record his winter with an 8:23.74 run, only to be beaten to the ‘World record holder’ distinction by her compatriot Meseret Defar (8:23.72) by the narrowest of margins. That Defar, the Olympic 5000m champion is not even in the Ethiopian line-up for Mombasa, again highlights their strength. We must also not forget that Dibaba did her own impression of Bekele in 2005, taking both the short and long course titles.

As well as doing battle with the Ethiopians for senior women’s honours in Mombasa, the Kenyans led by national champion Florence Kiplagat, have to deal with her name sake Lornah Kiplagat - once one of their fold but now racing for Holland - who as reigning World Road Running Champion, presents possibly the greatest threat to the Ethiopian monopoly. Also, not to be overlooked are Turkey's Elvan Abeylegesse, the former holder of the World 5000m record, and Uganda’s World 3000m Steeplechase champion Dorcus Inzikuru, who seems to be over her illness and injury problems of 2006.

But the task that Kenya or for that matter any other nation has to face if they want to unseat the Ethiopians from the top of the podium is too huge to adequately translate on paper.

In the men’s division a glimpse of light had appeared last year with the well-reported decision of five-time double World Cross Country champion Kenenisa Bekele after his victories in Fukuoka to end to his championship career in the discipline. Yet such hope was surely extinguished again on 5 March, with Bekele’s announcement that he had reconsidered. He “hoped to become the first athlete in history to win 6 consecutive 12km titles. This would be great for me, for Ethiopia, for Africa and for the sport of athletics.”

Kenya will of course be keen to contest at least the third of Bekele’s four claims as until his emergence in 2001 when the Ethiopian took the men’s junior title and the senior men’s short course silver, it had been Kenyan greats - such as multiple title winners John Ngugi, William Sigei, Paul Tergat and John Kibowen - who had set the standard for Africa in cross country running.

So do we see any possibility that Bekele could at last find his match in Mombasa?

If we do then Moses Mosop, the Kenyan champion and World 10,000m track bronze medallist is a candidate but with 2003 World 5000m champion Eliud Kipchoge only a reserve due to poor fitness, and with no Isaac Songok, last year’s short course silver medallist, in the Kenyan team, we must logically look elsewhere for a challenger for individual honours.

Eritrea boasts Zersenay Tadesse, the reigning World Road Running champion who was World Cross silver medallist in 2005. Qatar can call on Abdullah Ahmad Hassan who took the bronze in 2005. Tanzania can claim the talents of John Yuda who harried Bekele in the 2002 long race, and 2005 World Half Marathon champion Fabiano Joseph. Then there is also the challenge of Uganda’s Boniface Kiprop, the World and Olympic 10,000m fourth placer, and Moses Kipsiro, the African 10,000m champion to consider.

Yet for all the wealth of international talent lining-up in Mombasa the safe advice for those in charge of the medal ceremonies in Mombasa would be to keep the green, yellow and red of Ethiopia ready at the top of the flag pile.

Chris Turner for the IAAF

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