by Justin Lagat
Geoffrey Kamworor takes World Cross Country, photo by World Athletics
Justin Lagat previews the upcoming battle between Kibiwott Kandie and Geoffrey Kamworor at the Kenyan National Cross Country Champs, to be held this coming weekend. The stakes are huge. Justin gives us his view from Kenya.
In the absence of Geoffrey Kamworor who was injured by a motorcycle while on his morning run, Kenya’s Kibiwott Kandie, and Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo used the opportunity to overthrow him from the throne of the half marathon distance last year. They took everything that belonged to him. Kiplimo took the world half marathon title while Kandie broke his world record of 58:01 and set a new one of 57:32.
To reclaim his kingdom, Kamworor will have to show his superiority over the two runners in any opportunity he gets to race against them.
The RAK half marathon would have offered Kamworor a golden chance to deal with the two in one race, but the race got canceled due to the prevailing Covid 19 situation in the country. Now, Kamworor will have to deal with just one of them this Saturday at the Kenyan national cross country trials at Nairobi’s Ngong Race Course. That will be Kandie.
Kandie will be leading the Kenya Defence Forces’ team after he won their championships last month while Kamworor will be leading Kenya Police’s team having similarly won their championships as well. Not only will this be an affair between Kamworor and Kandie; the Kenya Police and the Defence Forces, the two big running shoe brands; Nike and Adidas, and their fans, will be crossing their fingers.
The two may appear to be great rivals for now but to Kenyan fans they offer a formidable hope of a Kenyan finally being able to win the elusive Olympic 10,000m gold medal, the last having been won in 1968 by Naftali Temu in Mexico City. So far, Kandie has expressed his strong desire to go for the 10,000m gold medal in Tokyo later this year.
The national trials will be used to select the team to represent the country at the African cross country championships in Lome, Togo on 6th next month.
