DEFENDING CHAMPIONS TO FACE HOT AND SUNNY WORLD CROSS COUNTRY CHAMPS
By David Monti, @d9monti
(c) 2024 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved, used with permission.
NOTE: This story was written remotely –Ed.
(29-Mar) — Defending senior champions Beatrice Chebet of Kenya and Jacob Kiplimo of Uganda won’t be shivering on the starting line of tomorrow’s 45th World Athletic Cross Country Championships in Friendship Park in Belgrade. Instead, they’ll be basking in ample sunshine with temperatures of 27C/80F. They are ready to race.
“I’m so excited to be here,” Kiplimo said at today’s pre-race press conference. I think I have done a lot of training. I’m excited to be here to race tomorrow.”
Kiplimo, 23, who has already won two individual world titles and an Olympic bronze medal, won the last edition of these championships in Bathurst, Australia, by a comfortable nine seconds over Ethiopia’s Berihu Aregawi. His compatriot Joshua Cheptegei, the 2019 world cross-country champion in Aarhus, Denmark, took the bronze just one second behind Aregawi. All three medalists will be racing in Belgrade tomorrow for both individual and team honors. Individual race winners receive USD 30,000, while the first-place teams earn USD 20,000. Kiplimo would like to go home with two checks.
“It will be good now when our flag would be raised,” Kiplimo said with a smile.
Chebet, 24, also a two-time world champion, comes into this event after a spectacular 2023 campaign in which she won both the world cross country and 5-kilometer road running titles, ran a 5-K world record on the roads (14:13), was undefeated in cross country, and took the bronze medal at 5000m at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest. Like Kiplimo, she’s looking forward to earning individual and team titles.
“First, I want to thank God for this privilege to be here in Belgrade,” Chebet said today. “Secondly, I’m so happy to get the opportunity to win again.” She continued: “It’s not easy to prepare. You know in Kenya it’s very competitive to qualify and represent your country outside here. I know we come with a strong team from Kenya.”
Indeed, the Kenyan women dominated the 2023 edition of these championships, scoring a scant 16 points (first, third, fourth, and eighth), and look like the gold medal…
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