Heart and sole win for Bekele

THE African dominance of global running was reinforced to stranglehold proportions at the world cross-country championships in Edinburgh yesterday where Ethiopians raced to all four individual gold medals and were deprived of gold in just two of the team races by their Kenyan neighbours who won both the senior and junior men’s contests.

Yesterday’s championships will be remembered best for the remarkable comeback performances of ‘shoe-less’ Kenenisa Bekele who failed to finish in Mombasa last year and Tirunesh Dibaba who returned to reclaim the senior women’s title relinquished to Lornah Kiplagat in the Kenyan coastal town.

Bekele wrote a whole new chapter into the history of global athletics by winning a record sixth senior title — Kenyan legends Paul Tergat and John Ngugi shared the old record with five apiece — but it was the manner in which he executed this particular victory that place him in a class apart.