Kenya: A Column By Len Johnson

Kenya Thinks Winning: perhaps others should, too

By LEN JOHNSON

At the course inspection for the world cross-country championships, the entire Kenya team _ men, women, senior, juniors and, probably, some coaches and managers too _ ran through the finish line.

Now, some courses have a finish area that repays study: perhaps it’s long enough or, like Amman with its long, steep hill and switch to the only grass on the course, different enough, to have a potential impact.

Not Bydgoszcz 2010, however: the finish was a straightforward 90-metre run-in off the loop. No nasty surprises for the unprepared lurked there.

The Kenyans were visualising winning, and in the couple of hours I was at the course that afternoon I didn’t see another individual or team adopt the same approach. Maybe some others did, maybe not; but they were neither as obvious nor as team-oriented as the Kenyans.

As it turned out the following day, Kenya had come ready to run. The Kenyans dominated Bydgoszcz individually and collectively, winning the four individual titles through Mercy Cherono, Caleb Mwangangi Ndiku, Emily Chebet and Joseph Ebuya, and the four team titles. Both junior team titles were won with perfect scores, the senior women took the first two places and four of the top six, the senior men went 1-3-4-7 (and eight and nine).

Arch-rival Ethiopia was eclipsed: two-time defending champion Genzebe Dibaba was 11^th in the women’s junior race; older sister and three-time champion Tirunesh Dibaba was fourth in the senior women; and defending champion Gebre Gebremariam was 11^th in the senior men’s race and, what’s more, led the team in to third place behind not only Kenya but also Eritrea.

It was the first time since 1994 _ when William Sigei, Hellen Chepngeno, Phillip Mosima and Sally Barsosio won the respective senior and junior races _ that Kenya has swept all the individual titles on offer; the first since 1996 it has collected all four team gold medals.

The Kenyans may well have known they were going to win, and dominate to such an extent, but no-one else did. One of the best things about this championships, as with Amman last year, was that we came to Bydgoszcz not knowing who was going to win any of the races.

The absence of Kenenisa Bekele, the query over the form and fitness of Tirunesh Dibaba, and the notorious unpredictability of juniors made this a given. IAAF president Lamine Diack, who gave an impassioned defence of cross-country at the pre-race press conference, alluded to the absence of some well-known athletes (as well as Bekele, Zersenay Tadese, last year’s silver medallist, missed after running a world record in the previous weekend’s Lisbon half-marathon):

“A world championship is for those who are there,” Diack said. “At the end of these championships I am sure we will have some great champions.”

We did: and some great racing and drama, no higher than when Linet Masai upped the tempo in the third of four laps in the women’s race and dropped Tirunesh Dibaba by the start of the final lap. In the men’s race, which was run at a fast tempo throughout, Eritrea’s Teklemariam Medhin made a fierce surge in the fifth lap and a loose-knit leading pack of 20 quickly unravelled into a single strand.

Ebuya closed that gap down with impressive power and it was a race in two from that point. Ebuya won the man-to-man battle to become Kenya’s first senior male champion since Paul Tergat in 1999, an incredible drought for a country which has been the dominant power for 25 years.

For all that, Ebuya is no Tergat, much less a Bekele. He may become a Tergat (or a John Ngugi), but he is not now. What he is, is a very good runner who has won the world cross-country championship.

The same could be said of Emily Chebet and Linet Masai, first two in the senior women’s race. Chebet is a very good runner, as is Masai (she won the 10,000 at the world championships in Berlin, after all). And both beat Meselech Melkamu, who was third, and Dibaba. But Melkamu has never won a world cross-country and Dibaba, despite her pre-race optimism, was definitely not in career-best form.

So whatever the future brings for Ebuya and Chebet, 2010 was a good year for opportunistic world champions. That said, did some western runners miss an opportunity. A Paula Radcliffe, a Dreena Kastor, or a Benita Willis (in lifetime-best form) been here, could have won. Somewhere in America, you sense Dathan Ritzenhein is rueing the injury which kept him away from this race. Somewhere in Australia, Craig Mottram is doing the same.

That’s not to say they would have won, but they would certainly have had an impact. As it was, Shalane Flanagan’s 12^th place in the senior women’s race was the best finish by a non-African born runner at the championships. Even she looked like she might have done better the way she was coming through the field mid-race, but she lost momentum in the latter stages.

Next year, Punta Umbria in Spain will see the last of the annual world cross-country championships. After that it will be held every odd-numbered year (which could rise to three out of four years if cross-country is accepted into the winter Olympics).

This year has shown there are cracks in the East African hegemony. Ethiopia appears to be coming to the end of its period of individual dominance; for all its gold in Bydgoszcz, Kenya does not have an unbeatable champion at the moment either.

Maybe next year, a few more teams and individuals will be running through the finish line on course inspection day _ and some will realise that visualisation on race day.