Simret Sultan of Eritrea training in Eldoret (© David Macharia)
Eritrea's best men's 4k race finisher in last year’s World Cross Country Championship in Lausanne, Switzerland, Ali Abdallah is aiming at registering better results at the 32nd IAAF World Cross Country Championships, Brussels, Belgium (20/21 March 2004).
Abdallah looks for PB
Abdallah, who finished 25th in Lausanne in 11:44, looks forward to achieving a better time too, better than his PB of 11:30 which he set during his country’s national cross-country championship last year.
He is one of two Eritreans who have been training in Eldoret, a high altitude region that has produced most of Kenya’s world beaters at previous major championships.
Abdallah, and Simret Sultan who will be running in the senior women's short course in Brussels, are the products of the IAAF High Performance Training Centre.
Sultan finished 15th overall (22:11) in the junior women 6k race last year in Lausanne, and went on to represent her country in 5000 metres at the World Championship in Athletics in Paris, France. Although she was eliminated in the heats, she managed to improve her PB from 16:20.30 to 16:09.48.
Abdallah has seen his running skills improve since he joined the HPTC. Among his achievements being a place in the final at last year’s All-Africa Games in Abuja, Nigeria.
The 22 year-old Abdallah is now also happy to confirm that the injury that almost brought his career to a pre-mature end in 2002 is now a thing of the past.
‘I am now focused on Brussels and I am happy because my body is responding well to the training,’ he said during speed-work intervals at Kip Keino stadium, named after the legendary long distance runner Kipchoge Keino. The HPTC centre is housed at his Kazi Mingi Farm.
His training partners at the HPTC include Sultan, and Kenya's World 3000 steeplechase silver medalist Ezekiel Kemboi, Janet Busienei, and Vickson Polonet among others.
Burundi's athletes are also in training in Eldoret
Abdallah and Sultan are not the only ones sharpening their skills at the HPTC.
The duo of Pascal Ntahokaraja and Gahungu Dieudonne from Burundi are training at the centre not only for World Cross Country Championships in Brussels but also for Olympic Games in Athens.
Ntahokaraja and Dieudonne joined the centre last year under the Athens 2004 programme which is meant to give athletes high level training in order to qualify and participate in the Olympics.
However, the Eritreans are better placed, second only to the Kenyans, than runners from other nationalities in the camp.
Sultan owes much to Eldoret centre
Sultan is the oldest member of the centre compared to the other 15 athletes currently undergoing their high level training at the HPTC.
She was among the pioneers of the centre in 1999, when Olympic Solidarity, through the Regional Development Centre in Nairobi, organised a two-week high level training camp in Eldoret.
At only 15 years old then, Sultan could not communicate with her training mates owing to a language barrier but today she is fluent even in English and goes home a happy athlete.
Within a short period of training in Kenya, she managed to run 5000m under 20 minutes, a feat that encouraged her to do more.
While still very new in the camp Sultan managed to lower her PB by almost four minutes in Nairobi during the Kenyan national championships-cum-trials for the 1999 World Championships in Seville, Spain. She ran 17.00.0, while her previous PB stood at 21:06.50.
