Sharon Cherop winning in Turin (© Giancarlo Colombo)
Kenya’s Sharon Cherop, the 2011 world marathon bronze medallist, and Brazil’s pan-American marathon champion Solonei Da Silva have been added to the elite field for the Bogota International Half Marathon on Sunday 26 July.
The IAAF Gold Label Road Race is one of only two events of this stature in South America, the other being the Carrera de la Mujer which is also in Bogota on 20 September.
Now 31, Cherop’s other honours include winning the 2012 Boston Marathon title. She has also won over the classic distance in Toronto, Turin and Hamburg. She has a half marathon best of 1:07:08.
Four different Kenyan women have won in the Colombian capital in the past four years and Cherop will be looking to continue that streak.
Da Silva, sixth in the 2013 IAAF World Championships marathon, showed he was in good form earlier in the year when he regained the Sao Paulo half marathon title on home soil.
Also added to the women’s field is Ethiopia’s Meseret Mengistu, who won the Paris Marathon in April in a personal best of of 2:23:26.
Eritrea’s Samsom Gebreyohannes, eighth at the 2014 IAAF World Half Marathon Championships in Copenhagen when he ran his current best of 1:00:13, joins a strong men’s line-up which includes the previously announced 2015 Tokyo Marathon winner Tadesse Tola from Ethiopia and Kenya’s Stanley Biwott.
Organisers for the IAAF
