Posted: March 19, 2004

Athletics: Numbers Add Up For Kenyans And Ethiopians At WXC

From David Monti

(c) 2004 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved RaceResultsWeekly.com

BRUSSELS (19-Mar) -- When the 32nd IAAF World Cross Country Championships commence here tomorrow, there is one widely held expectation which is surely to be fulfilled: Kenyan and Ethoipian athletes will continue to dominate this competition.

The statistics are compelling. In the 31 prior additions of these championships these rival nations from Africa have won a commanding 81 of the 120 available team titles. In the prestigious men's long course event (12 km), the Kenyan team has won the title an astounding 18 consecutive times. In the short course (4 km) event, only introduced in 1998, Kenya has won every available title: six in a row.

Interestingly, the Kenyans did not enter an IAAF World Cross Country Championships until 1981 when a subsidy from the world governing body, the IAAF, enticed them to compete, according to John Manners, a noted analyst of Kenyan athletics. Manners also noted that the Kenyan team did not take the meet very seriously until 1985 in Lisbon, the last year a European-born athlete, Carlos Lopes of Portugal, would win the men's long cross title. It was the Ethiopian team which had won the team title from 1981 through 1985, before the Kenyans began their incredible winning streak the following year.

The rivalry between the Kenyans and the Ethiopians is intense, a potent combination of national pride and and a quest for financial gain. Kenenisa Bekele, the Ethiopian star who has won both the 4 km and 12 km individual titles the last two years is the star athlete of these championships, especially after the withdrawl of Britian's Paula Radcliffe. Bekele's main rival is likely to be world 5000m champion, Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya, who won the world junior title in Avenches, Switzerland last year.

The Kenyan junior men have been as dominant as the senior team, winning 15 of the last 16 team titles and have put an individual champion on the podium eight of those years (an Ethiopian won six times and a Tanzanian once).

On the women's side there is more diversity amongst the competing nations, but the Big 2 are still at the top of the heap. Kenya and Ethiopia have won every long course (8 km) team title since 1995, and the last three consecutive short course (4 km) titles. Moreover, all three gold medalists in last year's competition in the women's senior and junior events were Ethiopian or Kenyan.

In the individual medal tally amongst the men, Kenyans and Ethiopians again dominate. Paul Tergat, the Kenyan star who won five individual titles, has won 14 medals in these championshpis, 13 of them gold. Bekele has won 13 medals, and is set to surpass Tergat's medal total at these championships. He is widely expected to double again, and should win four medals, two individual and two team.

Remarkably, the largest medal haul by an individual who is not from either Kenya or Ethiopia is nine by American Craig Virgin. He sits 10th in the men's all-time medal table.

The story is much the same on the women's side where Ethiopian Gete Wami won an astounding 18 medals from 1991 through 2001, eight of them gold. Ethiopians and Kenyans took the top-8 spots in women's medal production.

In all, Kenya has won 196 medals at these championships, to Ethiopia's 151. The United States is third with 58 medals, but is not expected to win one this year as two-time silver medalist Deena Kastor (née Drossin) will not compete. She bypassed the qualifying race because she deemed the icy and snowy conditions in Indianapolis where it was held threatening to her marathon training for the U.S. Olympic Trials race on 03-Apr. She is the U.S. record holder at that distance.

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