Kenenisa Bekele shows off his four Brussels' golds (two individual and two team) (© Victah Sailer)
Hicham El Guerrouj and Kenenisa Bekele have now met in two epic 5000m track races, firstly at the 2003 World Championships in Paris and more recently at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. But we have recently been offered the prospect of a 4000m rematch through the mud of a French winter.
When the much respected French Sports newspaper L’Equipe announced earlier this week in an exclusive interview with Olympic 1500m & 5000m champion El Guerrouj that he would run the short course event at next year’s 33rd edition of the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in St-Etienne/St Galmier, France, there was immediate speculation that the Moroccan would again face his main 5000m adversary, the World record holder Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia.
El Guerrouj who had already stated he would seek the World 5000m mark in 2005 before retiring in 2006, was always likely to clash again over 5000m with World and Olympic 10,000m champion Bekele on the track at next summer’s World championships in Helsinki, Finland. In their two previous ‘head to heads’ the Moroccan has come off the better finishing in silver ahead of the Ethiopian’s bronze medal finish in Paris, and was a stride infront of Bekele in Athens, when it was gold and silver for the pair.
The Moroccan has only appeared twice before at the World Cross Country Championships, in 1992 and 1993, when he placed 14th and 15th respectively in the junior races, and one can only speculate how the quadruple World 1500m champion will cope with the rough, possibly muddy terrain next winter.
Of course Bekele’s pedigree as the greatest ever cross country runner fell away from any serious question this winter in Brussels when he floated to his third consecutive World Cross Country long and short course double. Significantly, the Ethiopian master of the mud also stated that he would never double at the Championships again.
So what price a clash between the two maestros across the soil in St-Etienne/St Galmier?
Bekele as the cross country specialist has everything to lose and little to gain by contesting such a race, and could comfortably chose the long course option instead. But could he really sit in the stands of the city’s hippodrome where the races will finish, and watch El Guerrouj successfully encroach into his cross country preserve, especially so soon after suffering two consecutive major championship track defeats by the Moroccan?
It is an intriguing question but what is clear is that El Guerrouj’s gauntlet is set to lay on the ground at least for another few months. Events before Lausanne’03 and Brussels’04 have confirmed that when it comes to the Ethiopian’s racing plans at World Cross Country Championships, he is not an athlete who likes to be rushed into any decision.
Chris Turner
IAAF Editorial Manager
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