Serhiy Lebid left it until 300m before the line before he hit the front for the first time but when a decisive move was required the Ukrainian was still able to go through the gears and take his ninth SPAR European Cross Country Championships.Lebid, now 35, is the only runner to have competed in every single SPAR European Cross Country Championships since they were established in 1994 and has achieved the astonishing feat at winning the gold medal at the majority of the events.
The race for the medals started in earnest at the bell with six men together at the bell: Lebid, along with France’s 2007 junior men’s winner Morhad Amdouni and Abdellatif Meftah, Spain’s Ayad Lamdassem as well as the Portuguese pair of Rui Pedro Silva and Yousef El Kalai.
With a kilometre to go, Lamdassem made his move and, as he admitted later, Lebid cracked a little smile inwardly to himself.
“I knew when Lamdassem pushed and we were on our own that I could win. I have seen him do this before from a long way out and I knew I was faster than him over the final 400m. My confidence was helped by the fact that this year I’ve changed my training around and I have done more speed work. I also had my first good season on the track after three bad years,” added Lebid, who finished fourth over 5000m at the 2010 European Athletics Championships.
“This was almost the perfect race for me. I was at 99 per cent apart from a slight stomach discomfort in the middle of the race, it’s always my stomach,” he joked, particularly remembering some unpleasant problems at the 2006 Championships, when he finished 11th.
“However, I like the course here, having run here before. My training has also gone very well apart from the slightest of a thigh strain. Everything has gone like it has done in my best years at previous Championships. I spent three weeks training in Kislovodsk (which is at altitude in Russia’s Caucasus mountains) and then a week at home before coming to the Championships.
Lebid’s delight at his victory confirmed that he has not got complacent about the concept of winning gold medals but also showed that mentally he is in as good shape as he is physically.
“I have finally realised that I’m not going to be a marathon runner. It’s not in my head. In the past, I’ve said for a few years to people at these Championships, ‘next year I will run the marathon, I will do the training for the marathon.’ But I’m not saying it this year.”
Lebid shrugged off the pressure of being the favourite, simply because he didn’t realise he was!
“I didn’t know I was the favourite until Friday. To be honest, I didn’t look at the start list and who was going to be here until then. I had no idea that Bezabeh and Farah (the 2009 gold and silver medallists) were not going to be running.
“People keep asking me ‘what’s my secret?’ But there isn’t any, just hard work and it seems at this time of the year I can do my best work,” said Lebid, after crossing the line following 9870m of running in 29.15.
Lamdassem had no answer to Lebid’s turn of speed over the final 400m but hung on to claim the silver medal, after finishing fifth in Dublin 12 months ago, in 29:18 while Portugal’s Youssef El Kalai, who had surged at the start of the last lap to test his rivals, won an exciting battle for the bronze in 29:19.
The two Frenchman Amdouni and Meftah came home fourth and fifth respectively but had the huge compensation of helping their country dethrone Spain after three years of their rivals being on top.
France had won the silver medals in 2008 - and had a four-year winning streak in the senior men’s team competition between 2003 and 2006 - but missed out on the podium last year when they finished fourth and had made no secret of the fact that they were going to rectify that this year.
With four men in the top 14, they finished with a total of 33 points, just dashing the hopes of hosts Portugal to take the last gold medal of the day.
Portugal, lead home by El Kalai with Eduardo Mbengani seventh and a flagging Rui Pedro Silva in eighth, finished with 35 points to get back on the podium after a two year absence while Spain was third with 58 points.
Some of the biggest names on the track also showed that they could perform well at cross country.
Spain’s Jesús España, the 2006 European Athletics Championships 5000m champion and the silver medallist over the same distance this summer, was ninth while local middle distance legend Rui Silva, who also won a bronze medal in 2007 in his only previous outing at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships, completed the Portuguese scoring quartet by finishing in 17th place.
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