Monte-Carlo - With the 23rd edition of the Fukuoka Cross Country races taking place on Saturday 7 March, the tenth and final IAAF Cross Country Permit meeting of the 2008/09 season was concluded.
The IAAF series of races, which commenced in Oeiras, Portugal on 15 November 2008, fittingly was run off at its conclusion on a slightly modified version of the course which hosted the 2006 global championships in Fukuoka. ‘Fittingly’ because the annual IAAF Permit series is naturally focused on the overall climax to the cross country season, the World Championships.
This year we celebrate the 37th IAAF World Cross Country Championships which will be staged in Amman, Jordan, on Saturday 28 March. This is the first time in the championships’ history that they have been held in the Middle East.
Since we published our recap of the action that took place in the first half of the season (Nov 2008 to end of Jan 2009) - see 'Related Content' under the logo for previous story - the IAAF circuit has stopped at Italy’s world famous Cinque Mulini in San Vittore Olona, and then travelled to fixtures in Luxembourg, Kenya, the Algarve, as well as Japan, with the distribution of honours continuing to be spread across the world’s distance running elite.
In a season when the reigning World Cross Country champions Kenenisa Bekele and Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia have been sidelined by injury, the lack of a true stand-out King or Queen in waiting makes predications for Amman more suitable territory for a clairvoyant or an oracle than it does a sports statistician.
Throughout this season’s 10 meetings only one athlete, Florence Kiplagat (KEN) has managed to take more than one victory, with the winner in Seville (18 Jan) also taking success in Nairobi a month later, a meeting which also doubled as the Kenyan trials.
Kenya’s 2008 World Cross Country bronze medallist Linet Masai, who won the prestigious race in Edinburgh on 10 January was third behind Kiplagat at the Trials.
Moses Mosop was the men’s winner in Nairobi, a race which saw a set back to the Amman hopes of Qatar’s World Steeplechase record holder Saif Saaeed Shaheen who only three weeks before had sauntered to victory in San Vittore Olona, seemingly fully recovered from injury.
That race in Italy saw Antrim race winner (3 Jan) Stephanie Twell of Britain - who was fourth in the Edinburgh race - bettered by Hungary’s Aniko Kalovics, whose own attempt to take a second IAAF permit race this season was scuppered at the start of March. Latvia’s New York marathon winner Yelena Prokopchuka beat Kalovics by six seconds in the Almond Blossom Cross Country in the Algarve on 1 March.
Titus Masai, the winner of the opening permit meeting in Oeiras in mid November also came close to a second win losing out to compatriot Wilson Kiprop in Diekirch, Luxemburg, but doesn’t make the Kenyan squad for Amman in any case. The same also goes for another high profile winner of an IAAF permit race Abebe Dinkesa who demolished much of the world’s best in Edinburgh but is not listed in the Ethiopian line-up for the World XC.
from: iaaf.org
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