As Chris Turner of the IAAF said it the heat of Mombasa is now but a memory, a nightmare of course, in the history of Ethiopian distance running. In cold, occasionally rainy and blustery conditions in Edinburgh’s Holyrood Park last week, 36th IAAF World Cross Country Championships, it was not just a climatic difference between the previous and current venues of these championships which were noticeable but competitive ones too.

No ‘sole’ can stop Kenenisa Bekele

In a remarkable triumph over adversity and the spirited endeavors of defending champion Zersenay Tadese, Kenenisa Bekele cleared a series of obstacles to win a record sixth Senior Men’s classic distance title - and US$30,000 - at the 36th IAAF World Cross Country Championships, at Holyrood Park.

Bekele overcame, in turn, a missed flight, overnight stomach troubles, a dislodged shoe early in the 12km race, and Tadese’s determined mid-race surges, to regain the crown he had won in five successive years from 2002 to 2006. Today’s victory takes his record number of individual World Cross Country titles to 12 (6 Long Course, 5 five Short Course, 1 Junior).

After increasing his total number of World Cross Country gold medals to 16 (including 4 team golds) and his record total count to 27 (16 gold, 9 silver, 2 bronze), Bekele acknowledged that his six classic victories might be the statistic that stands above all the others. Until today, the 25-year-old Bekele had shared a record five classic distance triumphs with Kenyans John Ngugi and Paul Tergat.

Having failed to finish in Mombasa last year, suffering stomach problems in the heat and humidity, Bekele fought back from the troubles thrown at him here to pull clear in the eleventh kilometre. In the end, it proved a comfortable victory over runner-up Leonard Patrick Komon, from Kenya, and Tadese, whose valiant title defence was rewarded with the bronze medal.

“As far as the sixth Long Course win is concerned, I tried to accomplish it last year but, because of the weather, I was not able to do it,” Bekele said. “This has a very high honour in my life. I have won the double five times but I think this compares to that. However, I leave the judging to those of you in the media.”

It was in the third kilometre that Bekele’s shoe was caught from behind, and worked loose, as the field bunched taking a bend. From his place near the front, he dropped way down the field as he stopped to secure it. “My shoe did not fall completely off but I had to stop to undo it and put it back on, so it was as if it fell off because of the effort needed to put it back on,” he said It was the first time, he added, such a misfortune had befallen him.

Having secured his shoe, Bekele worked his way back up the field and, before long, was in the leading group. When Tadese picked up the pace in the seventh kilometre, Bekele was well placed to respond.  Dictating from the front, Tadese threw in several bursts, by the end of which he and Bekele had opened a small gap on the last challenging Kenyans, Komon and Joseph Ebuya.

A brief relaxation of pace allowed Komon and Ebuya to close up but, with four kilometres to run, the front four were well clear. With Tadese at the head, and the Kenyan pair side-by-side behind him, Bekele sat at the back before seizing his moment. Of his recovery from his near shoe disaster, he said: “It was near the beginning and I knew it would make the competition difficult because it is not easy to catch up after losing your shoe.

“I knew it would make the rest of the race tough. After the shoe came off I began to think a great deal about what I had to overcome and I had to focus a great deal on my race. If I had tried immediately to catch up it may have affected the rest of my race but instead I controlled my pace.”

Bekele had arrived later than planned in Edinburgh the day before the race. He missed his flight connection at London Heathrow after a delay to his original Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa left him with only 30 minutes to connect in London. His delay was unrelated to the widely-publicized teething problems at Heathrow’s new Terminal 5.

Explaining how stomach trouble almost cost him dearly again, as it had last year, Bekele said: “The day before yesterday, as I was flying in from Ethiopia, there was a delay and I spent the night in London and arrived here yesterday about midday. I had eaten breakfast there before I left and, after it, I didn’t feel well. I then had lunch and dinner here and at night I didn’t feel well. I had to get up three or four times in the night to go to the bathroom and I wasn’t feeling good.”

Tadese said that he was happy with his run – “a bronze medal for my country is still important to me” – while Komon made a big impression in his first year out of the junior ranks. Aged 20, he led Kenya to a third successive team triumph (39 points) with Ethiopia second (105) and Qatar third (144).

Dibaba sisters make it a family affair

As inspiration goes it takes some beating. Only minutes after becoming the most successful woman in the history of the IAAF World Cross Country Championships Tirunesh Dibaba stood in the flapping white tent that served as a media/athlete mixed zone in Edinburgh’s Holyrood Park and insisted it wasn’t her own victory that had painted the broad, joyful smile on her mud-spotted 22-year-old face.

What does it mean to win your third World Cross Country long course title, she was asked? “Yes, I am very happy to win again,” she replied. “But I am more happy about my sister than I am about myself.”

Just an hour before Dibaba had defied the doubters by winning her fifth individual World Cross Country gold, her 17-year-old sister Genzebe had sprung a surprise by winning the junior women’s title, emulating her older sister’s victory from 2003, the first of Tirunesh’s eight-medal haul.

For Genzebe it was her first major honour of any kind and an immediate inspiration to Tirunesh who was watching, nervously, from the sidelines. Indeed, she was meant to be warming up for her own race, but the anxiety proved too much and Tirunesh neglected her own preparations as her sister snatched an unexpected gold and set Ethiopia on the way to a record-breaking day.

“No, I didn’t warm up a lot,” said Tirunesh. “I was watching Genzebe’s race and I was very anxious for her, more anxious than I was for myself.

“I am so happy now that we have both won golds, but I am happier for her than I am for me.”

The Dibaba sisters may have become the first athletes from the same family to win gold medals at these championships, but neither was assured of victory until the final stages of their races. Indeed, they adopted strikingly similar race tactics.

Both spent the early laps hanging off the lead but never losing touch with the front runners. Both made their strikes on the final climb around the one testing hill on the Holyrood Park course, known to natives of Edinburgh as Haggis Knowe. And both produced unmatchable bursts of speed from the summit to take them clear of their rivals.

What’s more, after finishing fifth last year in Mombasa, when she and two of her teammates miscounted the laps, Genzebe wasn’t even favourite for her event, while Tirunesh’s form and fitness were in doubt after unsolved stomach problems had caused her to cancel much of her 2007 track season.

Incredibly, according to officials from the Ethiopian team, she was still only 75 per cent fit coming in to today’s race. “The stomach was all right today,” she said. “In the middle of the race I did begin to feel it but it slowly went away, so maybe it’s not like in the past.”

Afterwards, with the doubts truly laid to rest, both sisters were eager to give each other credit for their wins.

For Genzebe, it was Tirunesh’s “very good” pre-race advice that held the key, while for Tirunesh it was the thought of her sister’s win that spurred her into one last heroic effort at the end of her gruelling, and compelling, 8km race.

“It was partly in order to match her (Genzebe’s) achievement that I dug in and put everything I had into winning,” she said.

Back in Ethiopia they actually compete for different clubs – Genzebe for the Muger Cement Sports Club and Tirunesh for the Prisons Police – but they do often train together, along with their older sister, Ejagayou, the Olympic 10,000m silver medallist. They also plan to come together in the same club later this year.

“Genzebe is so young and talented,” said Dibaba of her younger sister. “In time I expect she’ll become even stronger and quicker than me.”

But for the Dibabas the habit of winning World Cross Country titles runs even further back in the family. Derartu Tulu, the champion in 1995, 1997 and 2000, is their cousin and Tirunesh was also keen to pay respects to the first great lady of Ethiopian distance running.

“I am aware that my cousin has won this race three times, so I’m very happy to have done the same thing,” she said.

For Tirunesh, today’s victory was something of a redemption after she was beaten last year in the heat of Mombasa by the Dutchwoman Lornah Kiplagat when chasing a third consecutive gold. It was a tough year for Ethiopia as a whole and Tirunesh was clearly motivated this afternoon by the need to put things right.

“Last year, as individuals and as a team we didn’t do well,” she said. “This year we redeemed ourselves. We have been preparing for a long time. Cross country is very important to us and we wanted to bring a strong team and do very well here.”

Well and truly redeemed on the grass, now Dibaba will aim to match her cousin again, on the track, by becoming the Olympic 10,000m champion. “I expect to do well,” she said of the Beijing Olympics this August.

Perhaps she should make sure Genzebe races as well – just for the inspiration.

World Junior 10,000m champion makes up for Mombasa 'dnf'

After three years in Kenyan hands, Ethiopia regained the Junior Men’s individual title over 8 kilometres today as Ibrahim Jeilan used his proven track speed to see off his challengers in the 36th IAAF World Cross Country Championships at Holyrood Park. Jeilan, the World Junior 10,000m champion, thus made up for his failure to finish in the corresponding race in Mombasa last year and for his fifth place in Fukuoka two years ago.

The 18-year-old Jeilan was thrilled with his victory not only for himself and his country but also for the name of his club, Muger Cement Sports Club.” He had seen Genzebe Dibaba win the Junior Women’s title 30 minutes earlier and taken the boost of her victory with him into his race.

“The reason that it was engraved in my head was the fact that, from our club, it was her, myself and Kenenisa (Bekele) who qualified for these World Cross Country Championships, so I had a dream that the three of us would win gold for our club and for our country,” Jeilan said. “That was what I was aiming for.” So it was now up to Bekele, winner of 10 senior individual World Cross Country titles, to complete Jeilan’s desired hat-trick later in the afternoon. Some 90 minutes later, Bekele duly obliged, regaining his title.

Jeilan, after his third consecutive domestic title, had believed that he was ready to become World Junior Cross Country champion. Tactically, he was faultless, content to let Benjamin Kiplagat, from Uganda, and Mathew Kipkoech Kisorio, from Kenya, make most of the running. Kiplagat, especially, took it on from the front and, for this, he deserved better than the fourth place that was waiting for him at the finish after Ayele Abshero, Jeilan’s compatriot, took the silver medal and Lucas Kimeli Rotich, from Kenya, the bronze.

It was Kiplagat, seeking to become Uganda’s first winner of the title and easily picked out for his height and yellow singlet, who forced the pace through halfway, with Kisorio in close attendance just behind. Kisorio is the son of the late Some Muge, who was Kenya’s first medallist in these championships, with senior bronze at Gateshead, England, in 1983.

By the third of the four laps, the lead group was down to 10 athletes, with Jeilan and Abshero running smart, letting the likes of Kiplagat, Kisorio, and Rotich shield them from the wind on the rain-soaked course.  Abshero occasionally forced his way in between the front runners, without ever taking a distinct lead and, entering the final lap, Kiplagat still looked strong at the front. The lead group was now down to six athletes.

In the seventh kilometre, another of the Kenyans, Titus Kipjumba Mbishei, took on the running and still six athletes were in contention. Then the picture changed suddenly and dramatically up the side of the steep Haggis Knowe (hill). Abshero took it on, stretching the front group and, as they came down the other side, Jeilan, Abshero and Rotich were in the medal positions.

Jeilan was the smoothest of the three on the awkward downhill and he pulled comfortably away along the flat run for home, clocking 22:38. Abshero followed in 22:40 and Rotich took third in 22:42.

“I am very happy,” Jeilan added. “I prepared extremely hard for this and Allah has made my dream come true. From when I first started running, I wanted to succeed in cross country and the track and now I have achieved my goals. My team-mate (Abshero) helped me a great deal. It was his move at the front that allowed me to eventually take the lead and use my fast finish. I think we worked together very well.”

Asked whether he was disappointed not to have taken the gold, Abshero said: “Every time you enter a competition, you enter hoping to win, so I was hoping to win. But I am very happy with this result.” By contrast, Rotich said: “I was disappointed, it was a tough race. The last two laps didn’t feel so good. I am not pleased at all.”

At least Rotich had the consolation of leading Kenya to team gold medals. Rotich, Mbishei, Kisorio and Peter Kimeli Some combined to score 21 points and give Kenya their 10th successive Junior Men’s team title and their 20th in 21 years. Ethiopia (28pts) took team silver and Uganda (37) bronze. Japan were the best of the non-African nations (4th).