Week in Review: BYU women leave disappointing performance behind
Cougars win NCAA title a year after fading badly in national championships
One year and five days after a bitterly underwhelming performance in the NCAA Cross Country Championships in Earlysville, Virginia, the BYU women’s team came through in the clutch in the national championship meet in Verona, Wisconsin, last Saturday.
The Cougars, who had plummeted from third place to 14th in the team standings in the final two kilometers of last year’s race, went from second to first during the same segment this year while posting a 147-164 victory over runner-up West Virginia. Providence finished third with 182 points, followed by Northern Arizona with 206, Oregon with 210, and Stanford with 213 in the 31-team race.
Senior Lexy Halladay-Lowry paced BYU to its sixth NCAA women’s title when she finished 14th with a time of 19 minutes 48.4 seconds over the 6,000-meter course at the Thomas Zimmer Championship Course. And juniors Riley Chamberlain and Carmen Alder were the Cougars’ Nos. 2 and 3 runners, respectively, when they finished 31st in 19:59.4 and 39th in 20:03.6.
“We were just completely and utterly committed to the team,” Halladay-Lowry said in a post-race interview during the ESPN+ broadcast. “In years past, the commitment to self has taken away from the team, and we were able to let go of that this year. And by doing that, we not only stepped up for ourselves, but we stepped up for each other. And that’s why what happened today… happened.”
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Halladay-Lowry, Chamberlain, and Alder had lost a combined 339 places during the final two kilometers of last year’s year when they finished 103rd, 216th, and 246th, respectively. But on Saturday, they picked up a combined 15 spots from the four-kilometer mark to the finish.
“I didn’t feel good until 4k,” BYU women’s coach Diljeet Taylor said. “I felt like they were really locked in. At that point, I knew they would be able to close. We got out with urgency, we settled in the middle, and then we finished with urgency. That was the race plan. I trusted that they had the fitness to close hard. Our training and the work they had done prepared them to close hard.”
BYU had been in first, first, third, and third, respectively, during the first four single kilometer marks last year before dropping to fifth place at five kilometers and to 14th at the finish. Its team score had gone from 167 points at four kilometers to 271 at five kilometers to 399 at the finish.
That was in sharp contrast to Saturday when BYU and Stanford were tied for third place with 194 points after two kilometers and the Cougars were in second with 166 points — nine back of Northern Arizona — after four kilometers.
In case you missed it, the following link will take you to a detailed post about the NCAA Cross Country Championships in Verona, Wisconsin, last Saturday.
Then came the critical fifth kilometer when BYU reduced its team score by 17 points to take a 149-177 lead over both West Virginia and Northern Arizona.
A hard-charging West Virginia team, paced by sixth-place Ceili McCabe, trimmed 11 points off BYU’s lead in the final 1,000 meters of the race, but that wasn’t enough to overtake their Big 12 Conference rival.
After Halladay-Lowry, Chamberlain, and Alder, BYU’s Nos. 4 and 5 runners were sophomore Taylor Rohatinsky in 43rd place — in 20:06.5 — and senior Carlee Hansen in 65th — in 20:21.6.
Hansen had placed 66th in the NCAA championships last year, but as the Cougars’ No. 2 finisher.
“I’m really proud of these women,” Taylor said. “They stayed committed to the process. They embraced the imperfect, which is what it takes in any season. We’ve had lots of downs, lots of ups, but they ran for each other and figured out how to fight their own battles and let go of individual success and focus on the team, and that’s what cross country is all about.”
Moving up the list: With its victory in the women’s race of the NCAA Cross Country Championships on Saturday, BYU now has the second-most titles with six.
The program’s first championship came in 1997 and that was followed by titles in ’99 and in 2001 and ’02. The fifth victory came in March of 2021 when BYU won the 2020 title when the championship meet was held four months later than initially scheduled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Villanova has won the most NCAA women’s cross country championships with nine.
The Wildcats’ last title came in 2010 and their first came in 1989 at the start of a streak of six consecutive championships.
One streak ends, another continues: North Carolina State saw its run of NCAA women’s team championships end at three on Saturday when the Wolfpack finished eighth with 244 points. However, another streak continued when sophomores Grace Hartman and Hannah Gapes finished fifth and eighth, respectively, to mark the sixth consecutive year that at least one runner from North Carolina State has finished among the top 10 individuals.
Hartman and Gapes, who had placed 63rd and 73rd in last year’s championships, are two of six Wolfpack runners to have produced a cumulative nine top-10 individual finishes during the last six meets.
Powerful team on deck?: The North Carolina State women’s cross country team did not have the season it was hoping for back in August as the Wolfpack went from being tied for first with Northern Arizona in the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association national preseason poll to entering the NCAA championships on Saturday as the No. 13-ranked team in the nation.
However, the squad out-performed its ranking when it placed eighth with 244 points in a race that was won by BYU with a 147-point total.
That finish could bode well for the 2025 cross country season as NC State’s seven-runner roster for the NCAA meet was comprised of one junior, two sophomores, and four freshmen.
The two sophomores, Grace Hartman and Hannah Gapes, finished fifth and eighth, respectively, and the junior, Brooke Rauber, placed 50th.
In addition, Sadie Engelhardt of Ventura High School in California has made a verbal commitment to North Carolina State.
Engelhardt, who lowered the U.S. national high school outdoor record in the girls’ mile to 4:28.46 during track season and qualified for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in the 1,500 meters, will be shooting for her third consecutive Division 3 title when the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Cross Country Championships are held at Woodward Park in Fresno on Saturday.
Strong rebound: Doris Lemngole of Alabama won the women’s individual title in the NCAA Cross Country Championships on Saturday after finishing a few inches behind fellow Kenyan Hilda Olemomoi of Florida in the South Regional on Nov. 15.
Lemngole, a sophomore who set a collegiate record of 9:15.24 in winning the 3,000-meter steeplechase in the NCAA track championships in June, had finished a little more than four seconds in front of Olemomoi in the Southeastern Conference meet on Nov. 1. But her former teammate at Alabama had turned the tables on her in the South Regional.
That was Lemngole’s first loss in five races this season and it would be her last as her 19:21.0 clocking over the 6,000-meter layout at the Thomas Zimmer Championship Course on Saturday left her well clear of second-place Pamela Kosgei of New Mexico, who ran 19:27.8, and third-place Olemomoi, who timed 19:28.7.
Amy Bunnage of Stanford, Grace Hartman of North Carolina State, and Ceili McCabe of West Virginia were the next three finishers with times of 19:31.1, 19:39.5, and 19:41.2.
The previously undefeated Kosgei, whose sister Brigid set a then-world record of 2:14:04 in the women’s marathon in 2019, had lowered the Zimmer course record to 18:59.1 in the Pre-Nationals meet on Oct. 19. However, that race was contested in mild conditions on a dry layout.
In contrast, the temperatures on Saturday were in the mid-30s Fahrenheit (1 to 2 degrees Celsius) on a course that was somewhat soft and moist after snow had fallen two days earlier.
Not surprisingly, the pace was quite tentative for much of the race as 27 women were within two seconds of first-place Bunnage after three kilometers and 17 were less than two seconds back of leader Kosgei at the four-kilometer mark.
However, the pace began to rachet up shortly after that and the front group was down to Kenyans Kosgei, Lemngole, and Olemomoi, Australian Bunnage, American Hartman, and Canadian McCabe when they came through five kilometers.
That leading group of six became the trio of Lemgole, Olemomoi, and Kosgei shortly after that and Lemngole moved into the lead ascending a rise with about 500 meters to go before blowing the race open over the final uphill straightaway that is approximately 300 meters in length.
Lemngole said she was very proud of herself in a post-race interview before stating that the “first 3K was so good… So when I crossed the 4k line, I was like, I have to push the pace, to just like, go my own way.”
She later added that although she had taken control of the race before turning onto the final straightaway, she “thought someone could pass by my side, but I was so excited that I crossed the finish line by myself.”
Good showing: Canada was well represented in the women’s race of the NCAA Cross Country Championships on Saturday as five Canucks, running for five different teams, placed among the top 20 finishers.
Senior Ceili McCabe of West Virginia was the top Canadian when she finished sixth with a time of 19:41.2 over the 6,000-meter course to lead the Mountaineers to second place in the team standings behind BYU.
The other top-20 finishers from Canada were senior Chloe Thomas of UConn, who placed ninth in 19:43.5, junior Sadie Sigfstead of Villanova, 15th in 19:49.0, freshman Rachel Forsyth of Michigan State, 16th in 19:49.1, and junior Florence Caron of Penn State, 19th in 19:51.2.
Hanging on for the win: When BYU won the men’s team title in the NCAA Cross Country Championships last Saturday, it marked the first time since 2004 that a program (Colorado) had swept the men’s and women’s crowns in the same year.
However, the two BYU squads achieved their victories in different manners.
While BYU came from behind during the final two kilometers of the women’s race to notch its sixth NCAA title in program history, the Cougars held large leads for much of the men’s race before hanging on to win their second national championship.
BYU totaled 124 points, followed by Iowa State with 137, Arkansas with 202, host Wisconsin with 212, Northern Arizona with 237, and North Carolina with 246. There were 31 teams in the race.
The BYU men are known for starting conservatively and then working their way to the top of the team standings in the latter stages of races. But the Cougars had a commanding 74-point lead after the first kilometer on Saturday, a 68-point advantage after four kilometers, and they were 61 points ahead of second-place Arkansas after the seventh kilometer of the 10-kilometer race.
However, they began to lose ground after that as Iowa State trailed BYU by 53 points after eight kilometers, by 27 points a kilometer later, and by 13 points at the finish.
“It helped that the pace was a little conservative early on because we got out well,” BYU men’s coach Ed Eyestone said. “Well, when you get out well, though, you got to hold on. Very proud of the way my guys held out. It was awesome. Awesome day.”
While BYU’s Casey Clinger led the race through the six-, seven- and eight-kilometer marks before finishing sixth with a time of 28:45.1 over the 10,000-meter course, fellow seniors Creed Thompson and Joey Nokes were the Cougars’ Nos. 2 and 3 scorers when placed 12th and 31st, respectively, with times of 29:01.5 and 29:21.5.
Juniors Lucas Bons and David Thompson rounded out the scoring for BYU by finishing 39th and 50th, respectively, in 29:24.9 and 29:33.6.
Iowa State, which had entered the race as the No. 4-ranked team in the national poll, came close to catching BYU in the last kilometer of the race, despite the fact that freshman Robin Kwemoi Bera, the Cyclones’ top runner all season, was their No. 4 scorer who finished 37th in 29:23.9.
However, Said Mechaal placed 10th in 28:59.8 for Iowa State and fellow senior Samele Masondo finished 23rd in 29:22.4 for the Cyclones, who also received a 34th-place effort from freshman Joash Ruto when he crossed the finish line in 29:22.4.
Which one is it?: Ed Eyestone, who is in his 25th year as the men’s cross country coach at BYU, seemed to want to have things both ways when it came to talking about his top-ranked team before and after it won the program’s second NCAA title on Saturday.
In an interview that I’d guess was recorded a day or two before the race, Eyestone made it clear that he regarded his team as an underdog to defending champion and No. 2-ranked Oklahoma State, even though BYU had defeated the Cowboys, 41-57, for the Big 12 Conference title on Nov. 1.
But after BYU’s victory, he told the ESPN+ announcing crew that “We had a target on our backs this year. You know we were ranked number one, but a lot of the pundits had us at two or even three, so love the way my guys got out. We put some pressure on early on and we held on. Maybe we held on by fingernails, but we held on.”
Eyestone might not see things this way, but the pundits who picked BYU to finish second or third might very well have been influenced by his comments stating that Oklahoma State deserved to be favored.
No magic this year: After winning the men’s title in last year’s NCAA Cross Country Championships with a near-flawless performance, Oklahoma State had a sub-par race on Saturday while finishing eighth — on the tiebreaker — with a total of 256 points.
The Cowboys had five of the top 15 finishers in defeating three-time defending champion Northern Arizona, 49-71, for the championship last year. But their Nos. 3-5 finishers placed 70th, 107th, and 110th in this year’s meet.
While sophomores Brian Musau and Denis Chepngetich placed fifth and 11th, respectively, on Saturday after finishing eighth and fourth, last year, Victor Shitsama and Fouad Messaoudi had huge drop-offs in their performances.
Shitsama, a senior, placed 70th this year after finishing 12th last year.
Messaoudi, a junior, placed 222nd this year after finishing 10th last year.
In addition, freshman Laban Kipkemboi placed 107th on Saturday after finishing second behind Chepngetich in the Midwest Regional on Nov. 15.
Repeat champion: Graham Blanks of Harvard won his second consecutive men’s title in the NCAA Cross Country Championships on Saturday after breaking open the race on an uphill portion of the course with a little more than 1,000 meters left in the 10-kilometer contest.
Blanks, a senior, had taken control of last year’s race when he surged on a downhill portion of the course in Earlysville, Virginia, with a little under a kilometer to go.
After criticizing that performance because he felt he had over-reacted too many times when someone made even the smallest of moves at the front of the lead pack, Blanks was in second place at the midway point on Saturday before running in third, fifth, and fourth place, respectively, at the six-, seven-, and eight-kilometer marks on the course.
Sophomore Brian Musau of Oklahoma State, who finished eighth in last year’s meet, broke away from everyone but Blanks with about 1,700 meters to go. But about a minute later, Blanks began to open a gap on Musau on an uphill grade.
The race for first was essentially over 20 seconds after that as Blanks had expanded his small lead by a substantial amount.
He was nearly three seconds ahead of New Mexico sophomore Habtom Samuel when he went through the nine-kilometer mark in 25:51.9 and he was never seriously challenged after that.
Although his final time of 28:37.2 left him less than two seconds in front of Samuel, Blanks stepped off the accelerator during the final 50 meters of the contest as he savored his impending victory.
Samuel, a sophomore who had defeated Blanks over an 8,000 course in the Pre-Nationals meet on the Zimmer course in mid-October, ran much of the race without a left shoe after he was spiked by a fellow competitor around the five-kilometer mark before kicking off the dislodged shoe. He placed second in 28:38.9 for his second consecutive runner-up finish in the NCAA championships.
Dylan Schubert of Furman placed third in 28:39.6, followed by fellow senior Yaseen Abdalla of Arkansas in fourth in 28:41.6, and Musau in fifth in 2:44.9.
“I’ve been to this course four times so I know the parts that are hard, I know the parts that are easy,” Blanks said. “And I knew the part back there with about a [kilometer] to go up that hill is really hard. And if you can muster up enough courage and strength to just like, muscle your way up that hill, get a little gap, and then just run, run for your life.
“I figured I might be able to pull this thing off, so that’s what I did today. It hurt like crazy. Not a fun way to win a race, but it gets the job done.”
Overcoming hurdles: After winning two of his first three cross country meets of the season, Habtom Samuel of New Mexico had to deal with what might best be described as bad luck in his last two races.
First, the sophomore from Eritrea slipped and fell during the first kilometer of the men’s race in the Mountain Regional on Nov. 15 before eventually finishing second. Then on Saturday, he ran much of the NCAA title race without a left shoe after being spiked by a fellow competitor around the midway point of the race.
Samuel found himself in 114th place after the first 900 meters of the Mountain Regional after falling down on a course that had some snow on it.
He had moved into sixth place by the 2.5-kilometer mark, but he was 18 seconds behind first-place Solomon Kipchoge of Texas Tech at five kilometers and 13 seconds down when he came through 7.5 kilometers in third place.
He was just under 11 seconds behind Kipchoge after 8.4 kilometers, but he was charging hard at that point in the race and and Kenyan’s winning time of 28:55.9 over the 10,000-meter course was only 3.3 seconds ahead of Samuel’s 28:59.2 clocking.
Samuel, who won the 10,000 in the NCAA track championships in June, stayed upright throughout the race on Saturday, but he basically ran the last half of the contest without a left shoe after he had kicked off his dislodged one after getting spiked.
Despite being at a disadvantage, he finished second to Graham Blanks of Harvard for the second consecutive year.
Tough way to end the season: Freshmen Solomon Kipchoge of Texas Tech and Justine Kipkoech of Eastern Kentucky were two highly-touted runners who dropped out of the men’s race in the NCAA Cross Country Championships on Saturday.
Kipchoge, who had won the Mountain Regional on Nov. 15 after placing second in the Big 12 Conference championships two weeks earlier, pulled off the course before the one-kilometer mark as he had been dealing with an injury to his right leg.
Chris Duarte, an associate director of athletics at Texas Tech wrote in an email that Kipchoge “decided to give it a go but it didn’t work out.”
Kipkoech, who had placed second in the Southeast Regional on Nov. 15 after finishing third in the Pre-Nationals race in mid-October, was amongst a large lead pack through the first four kilometers of the race. But he was in 28th place — four seconds off the lead — after five kilometers and he was in 97th place — 44 seconds behind the leader — after eight kilometers before dropping out before the nine-kilometer mark.
Mitchell Melrose, a graduate assistant in Eastern Kentucky’s athletics communications office, wrote in an email that the coaches at the school “would rather keep the cause for the DNF private” when he was asked if there was a specific reason why Kipkoech dropped out.
Clean sweep: Trabuco Hills High School of Mission Viejo, paced by a surprising 1-2 finish from Holly Barker and Millie Bayles, rolled to a 36-67 victory over second-place Santiago of Corona in the girls’ Division 1 race of the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Southern Section Championships at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut last Saturday.
Barker, a senior, and Bayles, a junior, clocked 16:40.7 and 16:45.6, respectively, over the three-mile course after overtaking senior Rylee Blade of Santiago in the final mile of the race.
Blade, the defending section and state Division 1 champion, entered the race as the No. 2-ranked prep girl in the nation by dyestat.com, but she finished third in 16:50.5.
Blade was five seconds clear of second-place Barker when she went through the first mile in 5:22.9, but Barker and Bayles were not far behind Blade when the Florida State-bound runner came through two miles in 11:11.7.
In addition to the 1-2 finish by Barker and Bayles, Trabuco Hills had two other finishers in the top 10 as senior Sophie Guilfoile placed sixth in 17:39.1 and junior Anna Desormeau was ninth in 17:42.6. Freshman Evangeline Williams finished 25th in 18:35.6 to round out the scoring for Trabuco Hills, the No. 4-ranked team in the nation by dyestat.com.
Junior Braelyn Combe placed fourth in 17:08.5 for No. 10-ranked Santiago.
Clean sweep II: Senior Abigail Errington of South Pasadena won the girls’ Division 3 race of the Southern Section championships while leading her team to a 43-90 victory over second-place Santa Margarita of Rancho Santa Margarita.
Errington was at the front of a lead pack of four runners when she went through the mile in 5:37.1, but she was 33 seconds clear of second-place Summer Wilson of Irvine when she passed the two-mile mark in 11:16.7 and she was 26 seconds ahead of Wilson when she finished the three-mile race in 16:56.6.
Wilson finished second in 17:22.7.
Senior Saidbh Byrne finished fourth in 17:55.2 for South Pasadena and the Tigers’ No. 3 runner was senior Maya Lee, who placed 19th in 18:55.6.
Clean sweep III: JSerra Catholic of San Juan Capistrano had four of the top seven finishers while posting a 29-102 victory over second-place Harvard-Westlake of Studio City in the girls’ Division 4 race of the Southern Section championships.
It was the fourth consecutive Division 4 title for JSerra, the No. 8-ranked team in the nation by dyestat.com.
Sophie Polay of JSerra came from behind to take the individual title with a time of 17:49.4 over the three-mile course.
Fellow senior Maya DeBrouwer of La Canada placed second in 17:55.1 after she had a five-second lead over Polay when she came through the two-mile mark in 11:39.4.
Junior Chloe Elbaz finished third in 18:01.2 for JSerra and the Lions also received a fifth-place-finish from sophomore Reese Holley, who ran 18:07.7, and a seventh-place effort from junior Kaia Streadbeck, who timed 18:31.0.
Sophomore Hayden Kroger was JSerra’s No. 5 runner when she finished 17th in 19:03.1 for the three-time defending CIF State champions.
Controlled victory: Senior Sadie Engelhardt of Ventura cruised to her third consecutive title in the girls’ Division II race of the Southern Section championships, but El Toro of Lake Forest upset defending state champion Ventura, 99-118, for the team title.
Engelhardt, the No. 1-ranked runner in the nation by dyestat.com, was in third place when she came through the first mile in 5:41.2, but the North Carolina State-bound runner was eight seconds up on second-place Keaton Robar of Newport Harbor in Newport Beach when she passed the two-mile mark in 11:44.2.
Her advantage was just under 10 seconds when the two-time defending state champion crossed the finish line with a time of 17:31.9. Robar placed second in 17:41.6 and she was followed by El Toro sophomore Gweneth Williams, who ran 17:46.6.
Ventura, the No. 25-ranked team in the nation, had three runners who finished ahead of El Toro’s No. 2 scorer. But the Chargers had seven runners who placed ahead of Ventura’s No. 4 scorer.
Depth prevails: Beckman High of Irvine did not have a finisher among the top dozen runners in the boys’ Division 1 race of the CIF Southern Section championships last Saturday, but the Patriots used superb grouping to pull out an 83-94 victory over second-place Great Oak of Temecula.
While Maximo Zavaleta of King in Riverside and fellow senior Dylan Jubak of Trabuco Hills in Mission Viejo placed first and second, respectively, with times of 15:00.8 and 15:02.3 over the three-mile course, Anthony Barrera was Beckman’s top runner when he finished 13th in 15:24.7.
However, teammates Nathan Horrocks and Aaron Feaster were not far behind him as they finished 14th and 17th, respectively, with times of 15:27.0 and 15:29.4.
Christian Weber placed 24th — in 15:34.9 — for the Patriots and teammate Ryan Barris followed in 32nd — in 15:45.4 — to help the No. 10-ranked team in the nation to victory in a race in which Mason Nguyen, their top runner all season, finished 48th in 15:57.6.
Closing with a rush: Senior Griffin Kushen of Tesoro in Rancho Santa Margarita sped away from his closest competitors during the third — and final — mile of the boys’ Division 2 race of the Southern Section championships to record a winning time of 14:38.5, the fastest of the meet in all five divisions.
Glendora, paced by the runner-up finish of Dylan Flores, won the team title with 73 points, followed by La Serna of Whittier with 99.
Kushen was at the front of a large lead pack when he went through the mile mark in 4:54.5, but the front group was down to him, J.R. Lesher of Hueneme in Oxnard and Flores when he went through two miles in 10:00.4.
However, no one could keep pace with Kushen during the last mile of the race as his winning time of 14:38.5 left him well clear of Flores in 14:54.2 and Lesher in 14:56.3.
After Flores, Glendora’s Nos. 2 and 3 finishers were Mathias Oliveros, who placed eighth in 15:24.5, and Brady Bertsch, who was 20th in 15:48.6.
Third win in a row leads to third title: Evan Noonan’s third consecutive win of the season gave the senior from Dana Hills High in Dana Point his third individual title in a row in the boys’ Division 3 race of the Southern Section championships.
Noonan, who appeared to be running well within himself, clocked 14:42.9 over the three-mile course while finishing comfortably ahead of fellow seniors Liam Miller of South in Torrance, who ran 14:54.1, and Oliver Zimmerman of Thousand Oaks, who clocked 14:59.5.
Oak Park, paced by the 10th-place finish of Grant Jones, won the team title with a 107-116 victory over South Pasadena.
Noonan led a five-runner lead pack through the first mile in 4:47.3 and he was at the front of a leading group of four when he clocked 9:54.1 at two miles. He then began to draw away from Zimmermann, Dana Hills junior teammate Oliver Hunter, and Miller.
After Jones clocked 15:38.8 while finishing 10th, Oak Park’s Nos. 2 and 3 runners were JJ Lew, who placed 21st in 15:55.7, and Ethan Marley, who finished 25th in 16:03.5.
Big performance from a smaller school: Oaks Christian of Westlake Village, led by the 2-3 finish of seniors Christian Yoder and Cooper McNee, won the boys’ Division 4 title with a 43-72 victory over second-place JSerra Catholic of San Juan Capistrano in the Southern Section championships.
While senior Max Douglas of Corona del Mar in Newport Beach won the individual title in 15:02.1 after breaking open the three-mile race during the second mile, Yoder and McNee clocked 15:06.3 and 15:11.9, respectively.
Oaks Christian’s Nos. 3-5 finishers were Joshua Mitchell, who finished 11th in 15:44.4, Arizehkwu Mwosu, who placed 13th in 15:46.2, and Vin Krueger, who was 17th in 15:50.1.
The cumulative time of Oaks Christian’s top five runners was 77:38.9, faster than any other team in the meet, including Division 1 champion Beckman, which had a team time of 77:41.4.
Four for five: Rodrigue Kwizera of Burundi won his fourth race of the cross country season and Nadia Battocletti of Italy got her first victory in the Cross Internacional de la Constitucion meet in Alcobendas, Spain, on Sunday.
The meet was one of two gold level events that were contested on the same day as part of the 2024-25 World Athletics Cross Country Tour.
Kwizera, who had a three-race winning streak end the previous week when he finished a close second to Thierry Ndikumwenayo of Spain in a meet in Seville, ran in third place for the first three kilometers or so on Sunday. But he began to push the pace about 10 minutes into the contest and by five kilometers the race for first was between him and Ugandan Martin Kiprotich.
The 25-year-old Kwizera, who prefers to avoid sprint finishes at the end of races if possible, stepped on the accelerator with a little more than a kilometer left and it wasn’t long before Kiprotich had lost contact with him.
Running unpressed, Kwizera clocked 22:58 over the 8.04-kilometer course and Kiprotich finished second in 23:09. Ugandan Samuel Cherop placed third in 23:33.
“It’s my third win in a row here – four counting the year I was disqualified for not wearing my club’s shirt – so I have to be satisfied,” Kwizera said in a World Athletics post. “The circuit is not easy but my experience here plays in my favour. I have used my usual tactics, to wait and see in the first half, then to move to the front to assess my rivals’ energies to finally attack over the closing kilometre.”
Battocletti’s victory came a week after she had finished third behind 17-year-old Yenenesh Skimket of Ethiopia and 18-year-old Sheila Jebet of Kenya in a meet in San Vittore Olana in Italy.
The silver medalist in the 10,000 meters in the Olympic Games in Paris, Battocletti and Konstanze Klosterhalfen of Germany had separated themselves from the field four minutes into the race. But they did not run together for that much longer as the 24-year-old Italian was clear of the German after three kilometers and was 14 seconds ahead of her at the midway point of the race.
Her lead continued to grow for the remainder of the 8.04-kilometer contest and she finished in 26:14, more than a minute ahead of Klosterhalfen, who timed 27:17. Claudia Arce of Spain placed third in 27:50.
“I was not sure of winning today as Klosterhalfen is a great athlete but I felt strong and managed to win,” Battocletti said. “Honestly, I love the Alcobendas circuit; it’s so tough but at the same time a perfect dress-rehearsal for the Europeans which are usually held two weeks later.”
Two for two: Matthew Kipruto of Kenya posted his second consecutive victory in a gold level meet on the 2024-25 World Athletics Cross Country Tour when he won the men’s race of the Festival du Cross-Country meeting in Carhaix-Plouguer, France, on Sunday.
Belinda Chemutai of Uganda posted her first victory of the season in the women’s contest.
The 19-year-old Kipruto, who finished third in the U20 race of the World Athletics Cross Country Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, in March, clocked 22:35 over the 7.31-kilometer course. Compatriot Robert Koech and Ugandan Harbert Kibet were credited with identical times of 22:47 while finishing second and third.
In the women’s race, the 24-year-old Chemutai ran 25:51 over the 7.31-kilometer course while finishing seven seconds in front of Maurine Chebor of Kenya and Asmarech Anley of Ethiopia, as they were each credited with times of 25:58 while finishing in second and third place.
Norah Jeruto of Kazakhstan, who won the 3,000-meter steeplechase in the 2022 World Athletics Championships, finished fifth in 26:03.
American stop on world tour: Edwin Kurgat of Kenya and Emily Venters of the U.S. won the men’s and women’s races, respectively, in the Cross Champs meet in Austin, Texas, on Nov. 21.
The meet was the eighth gold level event of the 2024-25 World Athletics Cross Country Tour.
Kurgat, who placed seventh in the men’s 5,000 meters in the Olympic Games in Paris, overtook early leader and compatriot Athanas Kioko in the latter part of the race to win.
Kioko had a six-second lead over Kurgat and Bradley Makuvire when he covered the first one-mile loop in 4:42 and his lead had increased to seven seconds after the second loop. However, Kurgat and Makuvire were only four seconds down after three laps.
Kurgat overtook Kioko not long after that and he was never seriously challenged for the victory as he covered the 8,000-meter course in 22:51. Kioko finished second in 22:56, followed by Eduardo Herrera of Mexico in 23:14.
In the women’s race, Venters took an early lead and was eight seconds clear of everyone after the first loop. Her advantage continued to grow during the remainder of the race and she had a 24-second margin of victory when she crossed the finish line in 26:03.
Kenyan Mercy Chelangat, a former NCAA cross country champion for the University of Alabama, finished second in 26:27. She was followed by Katie Izzo of the U.S. in 26:32.
Impressive lineup gets bigger: Salwa Eid Naser of Bahrain and Mary Moraa of Kenya top the list of five athletes who were announced as new signees with Grand Slam Track last week.
The others were Daryll Neita of Great Britain, Elise Cranny of the U.S., and Nozomi Tanaka of Japan.
Naser won the silver medal in the women’s 400 meters in the Olympic Games in Paris in August and she was the gold medalist in the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar.
Moraa was the bronze medalist in the women’s 800 meters in the Olympic Games after winning the World title last year and placing third in the 2022 global championships in Eugene, Oregon.
Neita placed fourth in the women’s 100 and fifth in the 200 in the Olympics, while Cranny finished 11th in the 5,000 after placing 13th in that event in the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021.
Cranny also finished ninth in the 5,000 in the 2022 and ’23 World championships, as well as 12th in the 10,000 in ’23.
Tanaka was eliminated in the semifinals of the women’s 1,500 and in the heats of the 5,000 in Paris after previously placing eighth in 1,500 in the Olympic Games in Tokyo. She also finished 12th and eighth, respectively, in the 5,000 in the World championships in 2022 and ’23.
As of last week, 37 athletes had signed contracts with Grand Slam Track for next year,
Those performers combined to win five gold medals, nine silver, and nine bronze in individual events in the Olympic Games in Paris.
GST, which is the brain child of four-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson, will kick off with its first meet at National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica, from April 4-6 of next year.
The other three meets — or slams as they are being called — will be held at the Ansin Sports Complex, in Miramar, Florida, from May 2-4; at Franklin Field in Philadelphia from May 30-June 1; and at Drake Stadium on the campus of UCLA in Westwood, California, from June 27-29.
The meets will consist strictly of track events and will pit performers against one another in the following men’s and women’s categories: short sprints (100/200), long sprints (200/400), short hurdles (100 or 110 hurdles/100), long hurdles (400 hurdles/400), short distances (800/1,500), and long distances (3,000/5,000).
Each meet will be held over the course of a weekend, with each competitor running in the two events in their designated category to determine an overall champion for that meet. The winner will be awarded $100,000 in prize money, with the runner-up receiving $50,000 and the third-place finisher winning $30,000.
The remaining prize money for the fourth- through eighth-place finishers will be awarded on a $25,000-$20,000-$15,000-$12,500-$10,000 basis.
You can click here for more details about Grand Slam Track.
Looking ahead: Ethiopians Sesay Lemma and Megertu Alemu are favored to win the men’s and women’s division of the Valencia Marathon in Spain on Sunday.
Lemma ran 2 hours 1 minute 48 seconds in last year’s race to trim five seconds off the course record of 2:01:53 set by Kenyan Kelvin Kiptum in his debut marathon in 2022. Kiptum went on to set a world record of 2:00:35 in the Chicago Marathon last year, but he was killed in a car accident in February of this year.
Lemma won the Boston Marathon in April, but he withdrew from the Olympic Games in Paris due to an injury. His replacement, Tamirat Tola, won the Olympic title.
Alemu ran a personal best of 2:16:34 while finishing fourth in the London Marathon in April, but she dropped out of the marathon in the Olympic Games.
This year’s marathon is being staged in the aftermath of catastrophic flooding in late October and early November that claimed the lives of 229 people in the province of Valencia and surrounding areas.
According to a World Athletics post, race organizers have confirmed that proceeds from the sponsors, the organization’s own funds, and runners in the race will be donated to help fund reconstruction projects in the affected areas.
Aside from Lemma, Ethiopians Kenenisa Bekele, Berhanu Legese, Guye Adola, and Deresa Geleta, and Kenyans Sebastian Sawe and Daniel Mateiko are some of the other top entries in the men’s race.
The 42-year-old Bekele set his personal best of 2:01:41 in the 2019 Berlin Marathon, but his best time since is a 2:04:15 effort to place second in the London Marathon in April. He competed in the Olympics, but finished 39th after sustaining a hamstring during the race.
Legese ran his personal best of 2:02:48 in 2019 and Adola set his best of 2:03:46 in 2017.
Geleta set a personal best of 2:03:27 in winning the Seville Marathon in Spain in February before placing fifth in the Olympic Games.
Sawe and Mateiko are accomplished half marathon runners who will making their marathon debuts in Valencia.
The pair finished first and second in the half marathon in the World Athletics Road Running Championships in Riga, Latvia, last year.
In addition, Sawe has finished seventh in the World Athletics Cross Country Championships the past two years and Mateiko lowered his personal best in the 10,000 meters to 26:50.81 earlier this year before running 26:50.83 to place 11th in the sensational Olympic final in which a record 13 men ran under 27 minutes.
In regards to the women’s race, Ethiopians Hiwot Gebrekidan and Tiruye Mesfin are regarded as Alemu’s biggest challengers.
Amane Beriso of Ethiopia, who set the women’s course record of 2:14:58 in 2022 and placed fifth in the Olympic Games, recently withdrew from the race due to an injury.
Gebrekidan clocked a best of 2:17:59 while placing third in Valencia last year, and Mesfin ran 2:18:47 to finish sixth in Valencia in 2022.
Stella Chesang of Uganda and Sara Hall of the U.S. are other notable entries in the women’s race and they have bests of 2:20:23 and 2:20:32, respectively.
The 41-year-old Hall will be running in her fourth marathon of the year as she placed fifth in the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in February, 15th in the Boston Marathon in April, and 18th in the Chicago Marathon on Oct. 13.
On the performance enhancing drug front: Emmaculate Anyango of Kenya, one of two women to have broken 29 minutes for 10,000 meters on the roads, has been banned for six years by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) after testing positive for testosterone and EPO.
Her ban is effective from Sept. 26 of this year and all of her results since Feb. 3 have been disqualified.
In addition to running 28:57 while finishing second to compatriot Agnes Ngetich’s world record of 28:46 in a 10-kilometer road race in Valencia, Spain, in January, the 24-year-old Anyango finished fourth in the World Athletics Cross Country Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, in March, and she also lowered her personal best for 10,000 meters on the track to 30:06.43 while finishing sixth in the Prefontaine Classic in May.
According to the AIU, Anyango had said in September that she did not know how EPO, as well as metabolites of testosterone, could have gotten into her system. However, she did say she had received injections at several hospitals while being treated after she had fainted.
She was adamant that she had not knowingly taken or injected any prohibited substances, but the AIU was not satisfied with her explanation. The organization stated that it had issued a longer ban than usual due to the fact that multiple samples from Anyango had tested positive for banned substances.