Eliud Kipchoge outdips Hicham El Guerrouj in the 5000m at the 2003 IAAF World Championships (© Getty Images)
The Thales FBKGames in Hengelo, The Netherlands, has become the traditional World record home for two of the all-time greatest distance runners, namely Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele, the current leader for 5000m/10,000m in the IAAF World Rankings.
This year’s edition of this IAAF Grand Prix meeting on Sunday 29 May will be no different, as the latter of those two legends will return to the newly resurfaced track, where last year he broke Gebrselassie’s World 5000m record (12:37.35).
Bekele, the World Athlete of the Year, will race the 10,000m in Hengelo, the distance at which he is the World and Olympic champion and holds the World record (26:20.31), and along with a phalanx of talented compatriots will have Uganda’s World Junior record holder Boniface Kiprop as a challenger.
In the 5000m, Olympic 10,000m silver and World bronze medallist, Sileshi Sihine will be the appointed Ethiopian hero, with much of the might of Kenya to contend with including World Junior champion Augustine Choge.
However, cutting into the annual East African party will be an even more illustrious name than that of Bekele. Contesting the men’s 3000m will be double Olympic champion Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco. The 30-year-old who won the 1500m and 5000m golds in Athens last summer, the first such Olympic double by a man since 1924, will intriguingly duel once again with Kenya’s top distance runner Eliud Kipchoge, 20. Kipchoge took the Olympic 5000m bronze behind the Moroccan last summer, having seen off the challenge of both El Guerrouj and Bekele to win the World 5000m title in Paris in 2003.
El Guerrouj has a personal best at 3000m of 7:23.09 (1999), while Kipchoge has a fastest of 7:27.72 (2004).
Other top names also confirmed for the Hengelo meet are quadruple World 110m Hurdles champion Allen Johnson (USA), Olympic women’s Triple Jump winner Francoise Mbango (CMR), while the local Dutch crowd will be hoping for something special from Lornah Kiplagat in the women’s 5000m, where she will face Olympic silver medallist Isabella Ochichi of Kenya.
Chris Turner for the IAAF
