Defending champion Joshua Cheptegei has said the men’s 10k field for Saturday’s revived World Cross Country Championships is “one of the strongest ever assembled”.
The championships are taking place in Bathurst, Australia, for the first time in four years after the biannual event was cancelled in 2021 due to the Covid pandemic.
And east African athletes are expected to once again exert their dominance. All of the senior male podium finishers from the 2019 edition in Aarhus, Denmark, will be lining up – led by the Ugandan duo of Cheptegei and silver medallist Jacob Kiplimo, with Kenya’s Geoffrey Kamworor also lining up.
The double Olympic champion hopes to join a class of other successful East Africans who have won multiple World cross country titles, including two-time winner Kamworor.
“The field is incredible – it has brought together incredible athletes from Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda and Burundi, so it would be huge to win again,” Cheptegei told BBC Sport Africa from Bathurst.
“Everybody has put in a lot of training coming to Australia. The athletes here are all sports heroes in their countries and I can say with respect that this is one of the strongest fields ever.”
It will be the first event Cheptegei, who holds the world records for 5,000m and 10,000m, has competed in in 2023. Injury problems have limited him to only one race since he successfully defended his 10,000m world title at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon last year.
“I’ve had a tough time preparing as I was also still working on my rehabilitation after the injury,” he said.
“But I’m now feeling okay again and I am so excited to get my fitness back. I am able to run on different courses again.”
Thirst for podiums
Lining up alongside Cheptegei will be Kenya’s Geoffrey Kamworor, who has also had his own injury struggles – picked up when he was hit by a motorbike during a training session near his home in June 2021.
He was forced to withdraw from the Tokyo Olympics despite running the fastest 10,000m on Kenyan soil during the Kenyan national trials. He was also part of the Kenyan marathon team, where he finished fifth.
He will be hoping to quench his thirst for a podium place, which he has been unable to achieve since winning the New York marathon in 2019.
“It feels great to be back to the cross country, it gives me an opportunity to go back to winning ways and most importantly to try and reclaim back the title,” Kamworor said.
Kamworor also beat Cheptegei at home to win the 2017 World Cross Country title in Kamapla. He will be using the cross country as a test event ahead of his London marathon participation in April.
Other east African athletes on the front line include former world half marathon record-holder Kibiwott Kandie of Kenya and Burundi’s Thierry Ndikumwenayo, who was ninth in 2019.
In the absence of the Women’s 10k defending champion Hellen Obiri, all eyes will be on Ethiopia’s Letesenbet Gidey – who finished third in the last edition – and Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet, the 2019 World Cross Country junior champion.
Gidey, the 5,000m and 10,000m world record holder, has also tasted cross country glory in the junior category. She won back-to-back titles in 2015 and in 2016 and looks set for her first senior win.
She will face off with Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet, who won a 5,000m silver medal at the World Championships in Oregon before being crowned Commonwealth Games champion over the same distance.
Burundi’s only female representative, Francine Niyonsaba, has been sensational since stepping up from 800m to 5,000m race after being barred from competing in the two-lap race by a World Athletics rule affecting female athletes with high testosterone levels.
Niyonsaba won three Diamond League meetings last season before picking up an injury that ruled her out of the World Championships.
