Kenya team out to prove sceptics wrong in Scotland

Kenya will be out to defend the world cross country overall title for the 24th time as more than 60 countries parade to challenge them with their arch rivals Ethiopia vowing to make up for the loss in Mombasa by beating Kenya.

Some members of Kenya’s 12km senior men’s team during training at the Kigari Teachers College in Embu last month. They will be trying to stop five time champion Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia from winning a record sixth title on Sunday. Photos/MOHAMMED AMIN
It will be a show down between seven countries namely Kenya, Ethiopia , Morocco, Eritrea, Qatar, Uganda and ,Bahrain , especially in the senior men’s races.

Kenya has fielded nine strong men to challenge Zersenary Tadese of Eritrea who won the men’s senior individual title in Mombasa.

The Kenyans are banking their hopes on the relatively young but determined team in this section led by the up coming Gideon Gangatuny, Leonard Komon and 5000m Commonwealth champion Augustine Choge .

Tadese told a press conference here that he was ready and fully prepared to tame Kenenisa Bekele as he did in Mombasa last year.

Tadese who has two brothers in the Eritrea junior 8km men’s team - , Kidane Tadese and Methawi Tadese - said that Kenyans were unpredictable and should be the team to watch.

Bekele skipped the press conference sending in an apology to IAAF that his flight had delayed and moments later arrived at the athletes village at Edinburgh University after the press conference.

The Ethiopia Squad will be spearheaded by Bekele , Gebre-egziabher Gebremariam and Sileshi Shine.

The first event 6k junior women will kick off at 2pm Kenyan time followed by the 8km junior men at 2.30pm and the 8km senior women and finally the 12k senior men

At the same time Five countries will on Sunday not compete in the world cross country championships after failing to obtain UK visa to travel here.

Tanzania is said to be one of the countries affected from the East African region. The Tanzanian team had not arrived by Saturday night and there were no hopes they would be here in time to compete.

A Tanzanian coach Max Iranga now based in Qatar said it will be sad to miss Tanzanians here as they have very strong team.

Post-election crisis

Burundi and Rwanda will be represented by only one athlete each. Jean Ndayasenga will represent Burundi while Divadane Disi will run for Rwanda.

* While the athletics world waits to see what impact Kenya’s violent post-election crisis will have on the country’s performance at the world cross-country championships on Sunday, the team’s fitness coach is proudly optimistic.

“No general accepts to go to war without confidence in his troops,” said John Mwithiga, declaring his faith in the young and hastily assembled team. “I will use simple tactics that have won wars in the past.”

Mwithiga, whose choice of words reflects his two decades as an instructor at Kenya’s Armed Forces Training College, is one of the unsung heroes of the country’s athletics success story.

Popularly known as “Warm-up” from his favourite phrase, Mwithiga, now 62, trained many of the country’s best distance runners.