The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) concluded its two-day congress in Berlin yesterday with the most significant decision, as far as Kenya is concerned, being the decision to make the World Cross Country Championships a biennial affair.The proposal to host the erstwhile annual competition every two years was supported by 132 delegates with 22 voting against it, meaning that after next year’s competition in Poland, the next global cross country championship will be held in 2012.
The IAAF, the world’s athletics governing body, said it would, instead, have area championships alternating with the World Cross that was this year held in Amman, Jordan, where Florence Kiplagat struck gold in the women’s eight-kilometre race.
Kiplagat is in Kenya’s 10,000 metres team at the world track championships that start tomorrow at the Berlin Olympic Stadium.
Kenyan officials did not take the IAAF decision well, saying it will affect athletes who traditionally use cross country running to prepare for the track season.
“Many athletes use cross country for loading and it helps them get into the right shape ahead of the track season. The decision to hold the world championships once every two years will mean that many athletes’ programmes will be affected, and especially Kenyan and African athletes,” Athletics Kenya’s public relations officer, Peter Angwenyi, said in Berlin yesterday.
Meanwhile, IAAF president Lamine Diack told a press conference that the 12th World Championships in Athletics will have special significance as it was in the same Olympic Stadium that hosts the competition in which the great American, Jesse Owens, won four gold medals in sprints and jumps at the controversial 1936 Olympic Games.
Great long jump rival
Special commemorative activities are lined up in the course of the August 15-23 championships.
“I am very pleased to announce that IAAF has supported USA Track and Field’s initiative to honour Jesse and I am pleased that we have the possibility to invite his relatives not only to attend this event, but to meet the family of Luz Long, his great rival for Long Jump gold in 1936,” Diack, himself a former world class long jumper, said yesterday.
“Owens was famous not just for his gold medals in Berlin but for breaking or equalling four world records in less than one hour at a meeting in Ann Arbor USA in 1935.
“I am delighted that they will be able to present the medals following the men’s long jump final next week.”
mzungo.org says: Jesus! If someone has good contacts to Nike, please please mail us. Those Athletics Kenia Stuff is so deadly! ;-)
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