From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Mon Sep 28 2009 - 08:54:24 EDT
Monday, 28 September 2009
Three-time reigning champion Tadese set to defend titles in Birmingham –
World Half Marathon
WHM 2009 - logo (IAAF.org)
relnewsMonte-Carlo – Heading the Entry List for the IAAF / EDF Energy World
Half Marathon Championships which take place in Birmingham, UK on 11 October
2009, is three-time reigning champion Zersenay Tadese of Eritrea.
The World Half Marathon is the fifth and final IAAF World Athletics Series
competition of 2009, and will bring together many of the world’s best road
runners to contest this annual event.
Tadese won the first of his titles in Debrecen, Hungary in 2007, at the
briefly (for two years) renamed World Road Running Championship, over the
distance of 20km. He repeated his success the following year over the half
marathon in the northern Italian town of Udine setting his personal best of
58:59 which still stands as the seventh quickest run of all time on courses
applicable for record purposes.
The manner of the Eritrean’s third victory last year in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, was a picture of brilliance. Tadese’s run was a solo venture of
athletics magnitude, breaking away from a quality field after just 5km to
win the first prize of US$30,000 in a time of 59:56, nearly two minutes
ahead of his closest challenger, Patrick Makau Musyoki (1:01:54) who had
also been a silver medallist in 2007.
Makau, the world’s fastest in 2009, is not in the Kenyan line-up this time
but in the shape of Sammy Kitwara the winner of the Rotterdam Half Marathon
in a PB of 58:58, the second fastest time of 2009, they still have a man
more than capable of giving Tadese a run for his money in Birmingham.
Kenyan men have won nine of the 17 individual titles so far contested
including victory at the inaugural World Half Marathon Championships which
were also hosted in the UK on Tyneside in 1992.
Tadese, the former World Cross Country champion, has had a bit of an up and
down year with his bronze medal finish at the World Cross in Amman in March
followed up by the disappointment of his ‘did not finish’ in what was his
marathon debut in London in April, and back up again to the elation of his
World Championships silver medal over 10,000m (26:50.12) behind Kenenisa
Bekele in Berlin.
Already the only three-time male winner of the World Half Marathon title,
can Tadese make it number four on 11 October in Birmingham?
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