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World Athletics Championships – France 2005 Kenenisa, Tirunesh double up again,
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Kenenisa Bekele described his latest IAAF World Cross Country Championships double as the hardest-earned of his career after completing the second leg of what is now becoming an annual routine.
For the last four years now the Ethiopian has taken away gold medals from the four-kilometre and 12km races.
And at the age of 22 he is established as the greatest cross-country athlete of all-time, ahead of Kenyan legends John Ngugi and Paul Tergat.
Having claimed the 4km title on Saturday, Bekele stepped up to the longer distance and produced a magnificent sprint finish on the final lap to streak clear of the opposition.
A winning time of 35 minutes and six seconds earned him prize-money of almost £40,000 and spearheaded Ethiopia to a team triumph at the St Galmier racecourse venue, in France.
Despite capturing his first gold as a teenager, a year after winning the junior title, for Bekele this was the toughest yet.
In January this year, his fiancee, and fellow athlete, Alem Techale, collapsed and died on a training run. Naturally, Bekele continues to grieve.
“These victories are more significant than the previous ones, because in the past I had my fiancee supporting me,” he said.
Bekele had been matching Eliud Kipchoge pace for pace for the entire race, until unleashing a fearsome sprint.
Kenyan Kipchoge was caught out and faded to fifth place as Zersenay Tadesse of Eritrea and Abdullah Hassan from Qatar claimed the silver and bronze medals.
“This was harder, because it was sunnier and muddier and the other competitors were very fresh and did not run yesterday,” said Bekele.
“I expected my toughest competition to come from Kipchoge and Tadesse. Running neck-and-neck with Kipchoge was a very difficult part of the race.
“But I believed my finish would be strong enough to win today.”
Bekele’s fellow Ethiopian, Tirunesh Dibaba, became only the second woman to complete the ‘double’ since Ireland’s Sonia O’Sullivan did so seven years ago in Marrakech.
The Ethiopian women also won team honours in both the 4km and 8km races.
Bekele faced strong competition in the 4km race from team-mate Werknesh Kidane.
Kidane had finished third in the 8km on Saturday and this time took the silver medal, only a second down on Dibaba’s time of 13mins 15secs.
Olympic 5,000m silver medallist Isabella Ochichi of Kenya finished third.
The Norwich Union GB side again failed to collect a medal, either individually or collectively in the team event.
Twenty-one-year-old Mohamed Farah was the best placed of the men, taking 37th place, while the team were 17th overall of 20 nations.
Behind the dominant Ethiopians, Kenya took the silver and Qatar finished third.
The leading British woman was Kate Reed, 40th in the race, and the team placed 10th. Behind Ethiopia, Kenya claimed silver and the United States bronze.
Tirunesh assures world of rising stardom
St-Galmier, France – Tirunesh Dibaba today extracted some family revenge, the 19-year-old leading her Ethiopian training partners in a dominant display to team gold and collecting the $30,000 individual first prize in the women’s long race at the 33rd IAAF World Cross Country Championships here at St-Etienne/St-Galmier.
Dibaba clearly enjoys racing in France, for it was in Paris two years ago that she became the youngest ever winner of the 5000m World title on the track. This time, her achievement was less of a surprise, but it was no less hard-won.
Twelve months ago, Dibaba’s older sister, Ejegayehou, was outrun through the rain, wind and mud of Brussels to be denied the World title by Benita Johnson, as she won Australia’s first ever medal at the World Cross.
Family and national honour was duly restored by the young Dibaba, though not before Johnson and the Kenyan team put up a spirited fight.
Dibaba covered the 8km-plus course in a breathtaking 26:34, with the judges’ examination of the photo-finish required to separate Kenya’s Alice Timbilili and last year’s bronze medallist, Werknesh Kidane, as they were both clocked at 26:37. By being awarded the silver, Kidane, the 2003 champion, completed her set of individual medals.
Kenya took the team silvers, with Portugal, led home by 15th-placed Analia Rosa, winning bronze, their first team medal at this meeting since they interrupted – briefly – the East African domination in Budapest 11 years ago.
Rosa, a steeplechaser on the track, clearly found the course to her liking. For if anyone was under the apprehension that Helsinki in August would witness the debut of a women’s steeplechase at the World Championships, they would be wrong: each lap here featured six low logs that needed hurdling, as well as a handful of man-made mounds designed to disrupt the rhythm of the runners.
At an official 8.108 metres – four laps of 1.956m, plus the 284m of the start-finish funnel – this was to be longer than any of the previous 32 stagings of the women’s race at the championships.
It was also conducted in conditions more familiar to midsummer than mid-March, with blue skies and sunshine over the hills of the Rhone valley, the temperature touching 27 degrees for the mid-afternoon start, adding a gruelling extra dimension to the endurance demanded of the 90-odd starters.
Otherwise, with the going underfoot at the St-Galmier hippodrome firm, this flat course, with the dirt of the racetrack blowing up a sandstorm under the feet of the mass of runners, would prove to be a fierce test of track speed, as a lead group of 16 women sped through the first lap in less than 7:30.
“The course was really hard,” Dibaba said, “and the weather was a little uncomfortable, but I was glad it wasn’t muddy.”
The fast conditions meant it was brutal, eyeballs-out, hard running from the starting gun, with Johnson prominent early on, hemmed in at times by a knot of runners including six Kenyans, five Ethiopians, Eden Tesfalen, of Eritrea, Zakia Mrisho and Ruhama Shauri, of Tanzania, and New Zealand’s Kimberley Smith hanging in doggedly.
“I knew she would be strong and tough,” Dibaba said of Johnson. “Last year she won by a very large margin, so I expected her to do the same thing again and make it tough.”
The relentless pace in the searing heat had boiled the lead group down by half long before the halfway mark, and the outcome of the race was defined. As if to reinforce the track pedigree required by this race, it was Isabella Ochichi, Kenya’s Olympic 5,000m silver medallist, dictating terms from Dibaba, who during the indoor season had set a world record for 5000m.
Midway around the third lap, and Johnson, challenged by two Kenyans and three Ethiopians, was struggling, her title hanging by a thread. Throughout the European winter, the Australian had raced her and won four times out of five: her one defeat coming at the hands of none other than Dibaba at Edinburgh after Christmas. It would prove to be a reliable form guide. “I was confident from that race that I could beat her again,” Dibaba.
As the leaders approached the bell, with Ochichi in the lead, shoulder to shoulder with Timbilili, Johnson was now 10 metres adrift of the pack, with Kidane, Dibaba and Meselech Melkamu stalking their Kenyan rivals.
A year ago, in the entirely opposite conditions in Brussels, Kidane had done much of the early pacesetting work and paid the penalty as she faded in the latter stages. This time, she and Dibaba displayed far more patience, and it was not until the final quarter-mile that the younger of the two unleashed the decisive kick, hurling herself over the final set of logs to enter the finishing straight well clear of the duel for silver between Timbilili and Kidane, 21-year-old Kenyan just preventing an Ethiopian cleansweep of the individual medals.
Closing the Ethiopian team in eighth place, one behind the tiring Johnson, was another former champion, Gete Wami, adding another team gold medal to her collection of 19 in total – a tally matched only by Kenenisa Bekele following his double gold earlier in the afternoon.
Dibaba and Werknesh both paid tribute to Bekele. “His achievements are a source of great joy for all Ethiopians, not just the athletes,” Werknesh said.
The women’s race here, though, sets up the prospect of an intriguing re-match over 5000m at the Helsinki World Championships in five months’ time, with Dibaba, Werknesh and Timbilili, plus the ultimately fifth placed Ochichi, all likely to resume their rivalry. And none, it seems, are likely to opt for the steeplechase.
Grief-stricken Bekele finds his legs
As he crossed the finish line in the St Galmier Hippodrome yesterday, and made his way into the shade of the grandstand, Kenenisa Bekele could no longer hold back the tears. They did not spring simply from the joy of having won a seventh successive world cross-country title. “She is in my heart,” the little Ethiopian said, pressing his right hand to his breast. “She is in my heart.”
The memory of Alem Techale had been with Bekele in Boston in January, and in Birmingham in February, when he was a pale, forlorn shadow of the runner whom even the world record book was unable to contain in 2004.
The spirit of his late fiancée was also with him yesterday when he rediscovered his winning touch midway through the senior men’s 4.1km short-course race on the opening day of the World Cross Country Championships.
It was on 4 January that Techale collapsed while on a morning training run with Bekele through woods near Addis Ababa. She died, apparently of a heart attack, before he could get her to hospital. Just 18 and the reigning world youth 1500m champion, she had been due to marry her boyfriend and sometime training partner on 8 May.
Bekele’s own heart has been broken. He has spent more time in the past two months travelling to Techale’s grave, 150 miles from his home in Addis, than he has in training. His triumph in the scorching French sunshine yesterday has to rank as the greatest of a distance-running career in which the peerless 22-year-old has captured world and Olympic 10,000m titles and run the fastest 5,000m and 10,000m races in history.
Setting out with intent etched upon his face and forcing the early pace, Bekele looked to be beaten when Saif Saheed Shaheen stole a march of 30 metres on him going into the second of two laps of the sun-baked racecourse on the outskirts of St Etienne. From deep down, though, he summoned the energy to close the gap. It could well prove to be the defining moment of his running career.
With Shaheen a fading force, Bekele surged onwards to victory. He crossed the finish line, to thunderous applause, in 11min 33sec, five seconds clear of the Kenyan Abraham Chebii.
It was not quite Bekele at his relentless, smooth-striding best, but it was Bekele with a significant spring back in his step. After finishing behind Alastair Cragg in Boston and behind Markos Geneti in Birmingham, it was Bekele back in winning form, too – extending the run of cross-country victories he has enjoyed since December 2001 to a 20th race. It also put him on course for a fourth successive world cross-country double, with the 12km long-course race this afternoon.
“It is greater than my Olympic victory,” Bekele reflected later, having regained his composure. “It is more significant because of what has happened. Joy comes frequently in life, but grief of this level is something you encounter only rarely. I have grief in my heart and I have joy.
“It has been very, very difficult for me because this is my first major competition since the death of my friend. To come out of it as a champion is a very special feeling. I thank God and all of those who have given me support, all of those who have shared my grief and encouraged me to come back as a runner.”
As he spoke, Bekele already had another gold medal in his dazzling world cross-country collection, Ethiopia having prevailed in the team race. The British squad finished 15th, led home, in 53rd place, by John Mayock, a silver-medal hero at the European Indoor Championships in Madrid a fortnight ago.
In the women’s 8km long-course race, Tirunesh Dibaba was in even more imperious form than Bekele. Into sprinting mode long before the finishing straight, she finished with a three-second margin over her fellow Ethiopian Werknesh Kidane. Already the 5,000m world champion on the track, the 19-year-old was following in the footsteps of her cousin, Deratu Tulu, a three-time winner of the long-course prize.
The British women’s team lined up with hopes of matching the bronze medals they won in Brussels a year ago, but in temperatures of 26 degrees their challenge slowly wilted. Kathy Butler failed to make it to the finish line, dropping out with heat exhaustion. Only Mara Yamauchi made it into the top 30. A former Foreign Office diplomat in Tokyo, she came in 27th. The team had to settle for sixth place, with Natalie Harvey 32nd, Hayley Yelling 33rd and Liz Yelling 37th.
The British run of the day came from the 15-year-old Emily Pidgeon in the 6.1km junior women’s event. In a race won by another Ethiopian, the 19-year-old Gelete Burka, the Cheltenham schoolgirl took 20th place. In terms of launching her international career, the fledgling Pidgeon was off to a flier.
Source:The Independent
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