Flashes of Panic

It looks like the last short course race at the World Cross is going to be, as my father might put it, a barn-burner, at least on the men’s side.

• The U.S. team is probably the strongest we’ve ever sent: Goucher, Lincoln, Hall, Torres, Watson, Dobson. Of Americans who have really run well for 5,000m over the last two or three years, the only person I really see missing is Tim Broe. Sad to say, they’re probably running for third.

• Kenya: “[T]he coaches’ biggest hope is in the senior men’s 4km race.” Choge, Limo, Songok. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the Kenyans have decided it’s better to pick one race and try to overwhelm the Ethiopians there rather than try to sweep both races; more likely it’s a point of pride to win the last team title, since I think only Kenya and Ethiopia have ever won it. What’s more, the coaches have supposedly been concentrating on finishing speed—these guys will run the last quarter-mile at something on the close order of 55 seconds or faster. As Larry Rawson would say, try running just one of those, let alone as the last lap of ten.

• Ethiopia: Bekele, Sihine, Gebremariam, and Dinkessa are all doubling between the senior races. Bekele has won the last four runnings of this race (‘02-‘05) and was second in ‘01, when he also won the junior race; with his four long-course wins, he is the most-decorated athlete in World Cross history. (More on that later, perhaps.) He is the world record holder at 5,000m and 10,000m, demonstrating his superior ability to sustain a fast pace; he is the Olympic and World champion at those distances, demonstrating his superior ability to outsprint a world-class field in the manner of Yifter and Gebrselassie. Sihine and Gebremariam would be dominant athletes in their own right if not for Bekele, and this will be their first race of the weekend.

• Anyone missing? Oh, yes, the “other Kenyans,” the Qatari team led by the former Kenyan now known as Saif Saaeed Shaheen. Shaheen, who holds the world steeplechase record, was Bekele’s main challenger in the 3,000m at the World Indoor Championships, tried and failed to steal the short-course race at last year’s World Cross, and will likely try again this year. There may be some North African challengers from Morocco or Algeria, and Eritrea and Tanzania have shown flashes of Rift Valley brilliance. (We’re so used to thinking of Africans under the lump of “Kenyans” that we forget stars like Burundi’s Venuste Niyongabo, who won the 5,000m in Atlanta ten years ago this summer.)

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