Posted: November 16, 2005

Athletics: IAAF Cross Country Season Launches On The Road To Fukuoka

Monte-Carlo - The twelve individual one day meetings which make up the calendar of IAAF Cross Country Permit series for the 2005/06 season begin this weekend in Oeiras, Portugal, on Sunday 20 November 2005, and conclude in Chiba, Japan on Sunday 19 March 2006.

The season will culminate two weeks later with the 34th IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Fukuoka, Japan on Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 April 2006. The most important cross country event of them all, the annual two-day championships, is the oldest IAAF World Athletics Series event.

The story at last year’s Championships at St. Etienne / St. Galmier, France, was of course Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele. While mourning the death of his fiancée who had died suddenly of a heart condition in January 2005, Bekele summoned up enough strength to win his fourth consecutive World Cross long and short race double.

Yet Ethiopia celebrated a second golden double in central France. The then 19-year-old Tirunesh Dibaba spectacularly took both senior women’s titles, a precursor to her 5000m/10,000m track golds in Helsinki in the summer. With Gelete Burika winning the junior women’s title, and only Kenyan Augustine Choge spoiling Ethiopia’s hopes of an individual gold medal sweep by taking the junior men’s title, it was very much a green, yellow and red decked party during that March weekend in France.

Will the Ethiopian parade go unstopped in 2006? Do Kenya’s first five places in the 2005 junior men’s race signal a rival in the fortunes of the country, which last weekend was awarded the 2007 World Cross Country Championships? The answers to these questions and so many more will unfold in the coming weeks, as the 2005/2006 cross country season builds to its grand finale in Fukuoka, Japan, on the first weekend in April.

Follow all the cross country action on the IAAF Website, which as always will provide features, interviews, meeting previews and reports throughout the season on www.iaaf.org

IAAF Cross Country Permit Meetings 2005/2006

 
NOV 05
Sun 20 - OEIRAS POR
Sun 27 - LLODIO ESP

DEC 05
Sun 18 - BRUSSELS  BEL

JAN 06
Sat 7 - BELFAST GBR
Sat 14  - EDINBURGH GBR
Sun 15 - SEVILLA ESP
Sun 29 - ALBUFEIRA POR

FEB 06
Sun 5   - SAN VITTORE ITA
Sat 11  - NAIROBI KEN
Sun 19 - DIEKIRCH LUX

MAR 06
Sun 5   - FUKUOKA JPN
Sun 19 - CHIBA JPN
 
APR 06
Sat 1 & Sun 2 - IAAF World Cross Country Championships, Fukuoka, JPN