Posted: March 22, 2005

Athletics: World Cross Country Double Sees Tirunesh Dibaba Replace Older Sister At The Top In Latest IAAF World Rankings

Monte-Carlo - The younger of the Dibaba sisters, Tirunesh, not only won the short and the long races in St-Etienne/St-Galmier over the weekend at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships, but replaced her older sister Ejegayehu at the top of the Women’s 5000-10,000m Event Ranking. Each of Tirunesh Dibaba’s victories (13:15 and 26:34) earned her 1400 points in Performance Scores, allowing the 19 year-old to improve her average by 42 points and rise from 5th to 1st.

With her 3rd (short race) and 5th (long race) place finishes in 13:21 (1340 points) and 26:43 (1300 points) respectively, Kenya’s Isabella Ochichi moved into 2nd place behind Dibaba. Ochichi overtook both the previous leader Ejegayehu Dibaba who dropped to 4th, and Meseret Defar who slipped to 3rd by a single point. In the Women’s Overall Ranking, Tirunesh Dibaba jumped into the Top Ten by rising from 30th to 9th, while her sister Ejegayehu tumbled to 17th, and Ochichi moved up a couple of places to 13th.

In the men’s races, Kenenisa Bekele successfully made his third double title defence thereby maintaining his leading position both in the Men’s 5000–10,000m Event Ranking and the Overall Ranking.

For the Race Walkers, last weekend saw the start of IAAF World Race Walking Challenge 2005 in Tijuana, Mexico. Ecuador’s Jefferson Pérez did not repeat his winning performance from a year ago and dropped two places to 4th in the Event Ranking, allowing China’s Chaohong Yu and Australia’s Nathan Deakes to move up to 2nd and 3rd respectively. Spain’s Juan Manuel Molina finished 4th in the 20km event with 1:21:53 (1200 points) and improved his Ranking position by three places to 9th.

On the other side of the world, at the Russian Winter Race Walking Championships in Sochi, Vladimir Parvatkin surprised many by taking victory in the 20km race with 1:18:06 (1245 points) and took a huge step in the Event Ranking by rising from 69th to 17th.

For the women, Spain’s María Vasco dropped a place to 4th, with Athanasia Tsoumeleka of Greece moving to 3rd. Germany’s Melanie Seeger moved up 4 places to 4th after winning in Tijuana with 1:30:48 (1246 points).