Meet Preview: Looking to add to their legacies
Victories by Cheptegei and Gidey in the World Athletics Cross Country Championships would solidify their standings as planet's top distance runners
Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda and Letesenbet Gidey of Ethiopia will be looking to burnish their credentials as arguably the most talented male and female distance runners on the planet when the World Athletics Cross Country Championships are held at Mount Panorama, just outside of Bathurst, Australia on Saturday afternoon and evening.
The meet will begin with the mixed eight-kilometer relay at 3:30 p.m. local time (11:30 p.m. on Friday in the Eastern time zone in the U.S.), followed by the U20 (under 20) women’s six-kilometer race at 4:10 (12:10 a.m. Saturday), the U20 men’s eight-kilometer race at 4:50 (12:50), the senior women’s 10-kilometer race at 5:30 (1:30), and the senior men’s 10-kilometer race at 6:30 (2:30).
It will be the 44th edition of the meet, but the first since 2019 after the 2021 event was twice postponed for a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Perhaps because of the two-year postponement, there seems to be a heightened sense of anticipation for this year’s meet which will be held during the height of the summer in the southern hemisphere.
The location and timing of the meet has not sat well with everyone, as two-time World cross country silver medalist Tim Hutchings of Great Britain recently wrote in Athletics Weekly that “a global cross country championships should no more be staged in the middle of the Australian summer than a global outdoor track championships should be held in the UK in mid-January.”
While Hutchings is a traditionalist who contends that championship cross country meets should be contested during the cooler part of the year when rain and snow are frequent – often making for more challenging conditions on the course – the forecast for Saturday in Bathurst calls for a high of 92 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius) with a good chance of rain in the afternoon.
No matter the weather, the two-kilometer loop that Cheptegei, Gidey and their fellow runners will traverse during their races has been respectfully described as “grim” by Abbey Caldwell, the bronze medalist in the women’s 1,500 meters in the Commonwealth Games last year and a member of Australia’s mixed 4 x 2-kilometer relay team that is expected to contend for a medal.
“There is no easy part of the course,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Company. “You’re either going up or you’re going down. There’s not a moment to reset and regain your momentum. It’ll be hard and fast. . . It’ll just be [get] out and run as hard as you can on a really tough course.”
Nic Bideau, coach of some of the top distance runners in Australia, added in the ABC post: “We know we’re going to get punched in the head in the first 30 seconds because the course is that tough.”
According to meet organizers, the course includes plenty of tight turns, hills in every loop, a stretch of mud, and one 50-meter-long section of deep sand.
How any of that will affect Cheptegei or Gidey remains to be seen as each of them have won gold medals in previous World Cross Country Championships.
Cheptegei became the first Ugandan to win a World cross-country title in the 2019 meet in Aarhus, Denmark – while leading Uganda to its first-ever team title – and Gidey won U20 women’s titles in 2015 and ’17 before finishing third in the senior race in ’19.
In addition, each of them holds the respective world records in the men’s and women’s 5,000 and 10,000 meters on the track, and both of them won the 10,000 in the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon last July. In addition, Gidey holds the world record in the women’s half marathon at 1 hour 2 minutes 52 seconds.
Cheptegei, who has run 12:35.36 in the 5,000 and 26:11.00 in the 10,000, had a short post on Instagram early this week that read: “Let’s bring it on @wabathurst2023 🔥🇺🇬”
A later post from World Athletics, which included video clips of Cheptegei’s victory in Aarhus, read: “Will @joshuacheptegei defend his world title at @wabathurst2023?
He faces tough competition from cross country legend @geoffreykamworor and World Half Marathon winner @jacob_kiplimo 😤”
Kenyan Kamworor placed third in the 2019 championships after winning the men’s title in 2015 in Guiyang, China and in 2017 in Kampala, Uganda.
Kiplimo placed second behind countryman Cheptegei in 2019 and finished third in the 10,000 in both the Olympic Games in 2021 and the World Championships last year.
Kamworor, who is four years older than the 26-year-old Cheptegei won his second title in 2017 after the then 20-year-old Ugandan, perhaps overly excited while running in front of a vocal home crowd in his nation’s capital, forced the pace for the first 8 kilometers of the 9.9-kilometer, but finished 30th after fading badly on a warm day and struggling mightily to maintain a pace of even 10-minutes a mile over the final few hundred meters of the race.
A video of his struggles went viral and the disappointment of that race has fueled his desire to succeed since. But he admitted to World Athletics that it took him several weeks to get over what happened.
“When I met people, they felt sorry for me, but when they asked me I would feel bad because they made me remember what happened,” he said. “I just had to stay home and not go out because I did not want to meet people.”
I can imagine how hard that was for Cheptegei, who is a national icon in Uganda and known as someone who is outgoing and smiles easily.
He was incredibly happy with his individual victory in the 2019 World Cross Country Championships, but also with the fact that Uganda’s top four runners totaled 20 points to easily defeat second-place Kenya (43) and third-place Ethiopia (46) for the team title.
Kenya – with 24 championships – and Ethiopia – with 10 – had combined to win the previous 34 team titles and those two countries are expected to be Uganda’s biggest challengers again on Saturday.
Ethiopia, which had won three consecutive titles in 2013, ’15, and ’17, is expected to be led by Selemon Barega, who upset Cheptegei to win the 10,000 in the Olympic Games.
Gidey, 24, also had a disappointing finish in the Olympics when she placed third in the 10,000 after setting a world record of 29:01.03 in the event two months earlier. But the Ethiopian, who has run 14:06.62 in the 5,000, ran her world record in the half marathon two and half months after her Olympic disappointment and used a strong finishing kick to win the 10,000 in the World Championships last year. That came five and a half months before she made the fastest debut in women’s marathon history in December when she ran 2:16:49 to place second in a race in Valencia, Spain.
Beatrice Chebet of Kenya, Rahel Daniel of Eritrea, and Francine Niyosaba of Burundi could be Gidey’s biggest challengers.
Chebet was the silver medalist in the 5,000 in the World Championships and won the U20 women’s title in the 2019 World Cross Country Championships.
Daniel placed fifth in the 10,000 in the World Championships in a race in which the gap between her and first-place Gidey was just over two seconds. In addition, she seems more at home on a cross country course than on a track at this point in her career and has not been beaten in a cross country race in more than a year.
Niyonsaba lacks the cross-country credentials of Gidey, Chebet, or Daniel, but she holds the world record in the 2,000 meters at 5:21.56. In addition to having a personal best of 14:25.34 in the 5,000, she has also run 1:55.47 in the 800. Should she be amongst the leaders with 400 meters to go, she could be tough to beat.
Ethiopia edged Kenya, 21-25, for the team title in 2019, and Kenya is expected to be the Ethiopians’ biggest challenger again this year. Uganda appears to have a good chance at repeating its third-place finish from Aarhus.
The mixed eight-kilometer relay, which will be run in a man-woman-man-woman format, was first contested in the World Cross Country Championships in 2017, when Kenya, Ethiopia, and Turkey took the top three places.
Ethiopia won the title in 2019, followed by Morocco, and Kenya. However, Australia appears to have a team capable of battling Ethiopia and Kenya for this year’s title.
In addition to Caldwell, the Australia squad is expected to include Ollie Hoare, who won the Commonwealth Games 1,500 title in 3:30.12, Stewart McSweyn, who holds the national record at 3:29.51, and Jessica Hull, the national record-holder in the women’s 1,500 at 3:58.81.
"I don't think many countries will have four runners better than us,” said Bideau, the Australian coach. “We're not overconfident, but we're looking forward to the challenge and looking forward to having a good chance to win and really capitalizing on having the home crowd on our side and knowing about the course a bit more than the others.”
Although the composition of the mixed relay teams don’t have to be finalized until 90 minutes before the race, the defending champion Ethiopian squad is expected to be led by Mekides Abebe, the bronze medalist in the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase in the World Championships, and Getnet Wale, fourth in the men’s steeplechase in the Olympics.
The other team members are expected to be Birke Haylom, the U20 World Champion in the women’s 1,500 who has run 4:02.25 – at altitude – in that event, and Adehena Kasaye, who finished fourth in the men’s 1,500 in the U20 World Championships and has a best of 3:36.91.
Beatrice Chepkoech, who set the world record of 8:44.32 in the women’s steeplechase in 2018 and won the World title in Doha, Qatar in 2019, is expected to be on a Kenyan team that will also include Emmanuel Wanyonyi and Brenda Chebet.
Wanyonyi placed fourth in the men’s 800 in the World Championships and Chebet ran a personal best of 4:04.64 to place second in the women’s 1,500 meters in the World U20 Championships.
The outlook for the men’s and women’s U20 races is very similar to the senior events in that they are expected to be dominated by runners from east Africa.
Ethiopia, the two-time defending men’s team champion, is expected to be led by Berelet Zeleke and Boki Diriba. That pair finished first and second in the U20 race of last month’s prestigious Jan Meda meet in the country’s capital of Addis Abada, where the results determined the national team for Bathurst.
Kenya will be looking for a bit of redemption as 2019 marked the first time since 1984 that a Kenyan runner had not won a medal in the U20 men’s race.
Ishmael Kipkirui and Reynold Kipkorir Cheruiyot placed first and second in the Kenyan team trials in December and have impressive track credentials.
Kipkirui posted personal bests of 7:52.74 in the 3,000 and 13:26.98 for 5,000 last year while racing in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, which has an elevation of nearly 6,000 feet (1,830 meters).
Cheruiyot won the 1,500 in the U20 World Championships last year and has run 3:34.02 in that event, as well as 28:36 for 10,000 meters on the roads.
Uganda, which edged Kenya for second in the 2019 team race, is expected to be led by Kenneth Kiprop, who won his nation’s trial race.
Ethiopia will be shooting for its fourth consecutive U20 women’s title, with Melknat Wudu and Medina Eisa leading the way.
Wudu was the silver medalist in the 5,000 behind Eisa in the U20 World Championships last year and has run 14:54 on the roads. Eisa has run 14:53 for 5,000 meters on the roads, as well as 8:41.42 for 3,000 meters on the track.
Kenya, which would appear to be Ethiopia’s biggest threat for the team title, will be paced by Faith Cherotich, who won the U20 World title in the steeplechase last year and was ranked fifth in the world by Track & Field News for the year. She ran a personal best of 9:06.14 to finish third in the Diamond League Final last September before setting a U20 national record of 4:28.97 in the mile.
Nancy Cherop, bronze medalist in the 3,000 in the U20 World Championships, is another Kenyan who could contend for a medal.
I will be very interested to see how a pair of high school seniors from the U.S. fare in the U20 events after winning their respective trials race.
Leo Young of Newbury Park High in California ran 4:00.77 in the mile last year, as well as 8:39.57 in the 3,200 meters, before a severe sinus infection led to him calling it a season in mid-April.
Irene Riggs of Morgantown High in West Virginia is coming off an undefeated cross-country campaign in the states after running 9:50.72 for two miles during her junior track season.