Kenya can dominate at home,says coach

COACH John Mwithiga isconfident his Kenya squad can dominate on home soil in this weekend’s IAAF World Cross Country Championships.

Mwithiga has predicted the host nation can win all four titles — two senior and two junior — when the event gets underway at Mombasa golf club tomorrow.

“We have prepared well and are now ready to fetch honour for our country,” said Mwithiga after the team arrived in Mombasa from a month’s intensive training camp in Embu.

The coach also believes there are few athletes at the meeting who can compete with John Ngugi, five-time winner of the IAAF senior title, or Paul Tergat, who claimed five successive wins from 1995.

“We are not coming to Mombasa with any particular standout individual like them — this is a natural cycle which keeps on changing once every six years,” said Mwithiga.

However, there is a popular consensus that Ethiopia could spoil what will still be an historic occasion, as the world’s most successful distance running nation hosts the champ-ionships for the first time.

Kenya’s northern neighbours will field Kenenisa Bekele, who is chasing a sixth consecutive long-course victory, and Tirunesh Dibaba in the women’s event.

Effectively, that leaves Kenya chasing the minor junior honours led by Mathew Kisorio and Pauline Korkwiang, both confident of further success after their 2006 victories in Fukuoka.

Whatever the outcome, the two outstanding east African countries should emerge the dominant forces over very fast and flat sea-level courses on Kenya’s coastal plain.

Meanwhile, Paul Kipsiele Koech is hoping his concentration will be much sharper when returning to compete at this year’s IAAF Golden Spike Grand Prix meeting in Ostrava on June 27.

The world’s top ranked 3,000m steeplechaser in 2006 thought he had won last summer’s race, until realising an official had miscounted the number of laps and he still had one to complete.

“As for what happened last year, it was something bad in my career,” said Kipsiele Koech.

“So I hope the race organiser will do something to ensure that the mistake does not happen again.

“My plan for Ostrava this year is to attempt a fast race, maybe even to break the stadium record,” added the runner, who was hoping to improve on the record of fellow countryman Wilson Boit Kipketer set five years ago.

Shot putter Christian Cantwell, who topped this year’s world indoor list, will challenge fellow Americans Reese Hoffa and Dan Taylor in the event.

“I feel confident about extending the (IAAF grand prix meeting) record,” said Cantwell, who will be chasing a mark of 21.64m thrown 20 years ago by Czech Remigius Machura.