Kenya Dominates World Cross Country Championships
Posted by African Press International on April 1, 2010
Joseph Ebuya and Emily Chebet led the charge Sunday as Kenya swept the individual and team gold medals at the World Cross Country Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland.
This marks the first time since 1994 that Team Kenya has taken all of the top titles. Kenya also swept the junior team and individual titles.
Chebet won the women’s eight-kilometers title with a time of 24 minutes and 19 seconds, outsprinting fellow Kenyan Linet Masai in the home stretch to secure the victory.
Ebuya spent most of the 12-kilometer senior men’s race trailing Eritrea’s Teklemariam Medhin, only to overpower him in the final moments and clock in at exactly 33 minutes. Of the top ten finishers in the race, five were Kenyans. Ebuya became the first Kenyan to win the title since the legendary Paul Tergat won his fifth and final race in Belfast in 1999.
Tergat hailed the team’s performance.
“It is a great day for us Kenyans,” he said. “I am so excited that they have brought back the titles. It has been a long wait and it makes me happy that we fought so gallantly.”
John Ngugi, another Kenyan long distance star and former Olympic gold medalist, said the result verifies Kenya’s prominence among the distance running community: “It shows that Kenyans are still the leading cross country nation. My congratulations to them.”
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