Athletics: Forah Leads Britain To Edinburgh

Double European champion Mo Farah will lead the British team in tomorrow’s Great Edinburgh Cross Country race.

The new 8km team challenge, one of three races at the BBC televised meet, will pit Britain against top athletes from Europe and the United States. Reigning  world track champions Vivian Cheruiyot and Linet Masai will compete for the women’s individual 6km title.

The Kenyan duo won the 5,000m and 10,000m respectively at last year’s IAAF World Athletics Championships.

Masai, the 5,000m Commonwealth Games champion, won the Great Edinburgh Cross Country title in 2009, while Cheruiyot has twice finished runner-up.

Elite athletes co-ordinator Peter Riley said: “The field for the women’s 6km race is definitely coming together with the signing of these two world class  performers.”

Unfortunately for the British team, Chris Thompson – runner-up to Farah in the 10,000m at the European Championships – has withdrawn with a hip injury, and  his place will be taken by two-time English Cross-Country champion Frank Tickner.

The new international team challenge race will see Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s senior, under-23 and under-20 men take on the United States and a  European select team.

Leading the visitors’ respective charges will be reigning US national cross country champion Dathan Ritzenhein and nine-time European cross country champion,  Sergey Lebid.

Despite the stiff opposition, UK Athletics head of endurance Ian Stewart is confident that the British team can rise to the occasion.

Stewart said: “We’ve had a brilliant 2010, most recently in the European Cross Country Championships where we finished top of the medal table. “The junior  boys were brilliant in Portugal, winning a team gold and a few of them are going to gain even greater experience by stepping up to the under-23 age group for  the first time.”

Farah was absent when Ukrainian Lebid ran to his latest title in Portugal in December. The Brit was away at intensive training camps at altitude in Kenya,  but Riley said he did not have a point to prove to the Ukrainian. “His primary focus already is next year’s World Championships in Daegu [South Korea],” he  said.

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