BY WILLIAM NJUGUNA AND IAAF
Kenyan identifies first race after record breaking feat
World marathon record holder Dennis Kimetto’s first race after breaking the marathon world record will be at the Montferland Run in Heerenberg, Netherlands on December 7.
And for the first time ever in the event’s 18-year history, both marathon world record-holders will be in action as Paula Radcliffe will line up for the women’s event.
Last month Kimetto broke Kipsang’s marathon record by 26 seconds, clocking 2:02:57 to win in Berlin. After Kipsang broke the mark last year, he made the Montferland Run his next race, just as Haile Gebrselassie did in 2007 after breaking the marathon world record.
While Gebrselassie won in Heerenberg in 2007, Kipsang finished a distant fifth in 2013.
Kimetto will be hoping to follow more in Gebrselassie’s footsteps by taking victory in the Dutch city. The Kenyan has experience of the course too, having finished sixth at the 2012 edition of the 15 kilometres race when Geoffrey Mutai won in a course record of 42:25.
When it comes to this particular race, Radcliffe has considerably less experience than Kimetto. The 40-year-old has never raced on Dutch soil, nor has she ever contested a 15km race.
Dennis Kimetto’s first race after breaking the marathon world record will be at the Montferland Run in ‘s-Heerenberg on 7 December.
And for the first time ever in the event’s 18-year history, both marathon world record-holders will be in action as Paula Radcliffe will line up for the women’s event.
Having battled with a long-term foot injury over the past few years, the multiple world champion on the roads and cross country recently made a low-key return to racing in a quest to be fit enough to contest next year’s London Marathon.
Elsewhere the series of 11 individual meetings in seven different countries which make up this winter’s IAAF Cross Country Permit series 2014/15 will kick off with the XI Cross de Atapuerca, near the Spanish city of Burgos, on Sunday 16 November.
The Atapuerca race has often been the curtain raiser for the series in recent years and winners have regularly gone on to success at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships later in the winter. This was amply demonstrated by 2012 men’s winner Imane Merga, who later that season took the silver medal on the global stage in Bydgoszcz, Poland, which staged the most recent edition of the championships.
In the course of the three-and-a-half months after Atapuerca, many of the world’s finest middle and long-distance runners will take part in the series, which traverses three continents before its conclusion at the famous Antrim International Cross Country in Northern Ireland. The Antrim meeting has this year moved from its traditional early January place on the calendar and instead will be staged on Saturday 14 March.
The focus of all the leading runners competing in the series will be the 2015 IAAF World Cross Country Championships, which will celebrate its 41st edition on 28 March in Guiyang, China.
“We have a challenge to maintain a global perspective on this aspect of the sport, which not only has great tradition, but tremendous potential not only as a unique discipline but as a bed rock of endurance running,” IAAF vice president Sebastian Coe commented at the IAAF Global Seminar on Cross Country Running held in Belgrade, Serbia, last December. The series will again aim to demonstrate and highlight the discipline’s international appeal and central place in athletics.
Courtesy of the-star.co.ke