Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo, the reigning Chicago Marathon champion, will attempt to win his third consecutive men’s crown at the World Cross Country Championships on Saturday in Tallahassee, Florida.<\/p>\n
Kiplimo could become only the fourth man to win three world cross country titles in a row after\u00a0Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele (2002-2006), Kenya’s Paul Tergat (1995-1999) and\u00a0Kenya’s John Ngugi (1986-1989).<\/p>\n
Kiplimo was last year’s London Marathon runner-up in 2hrs 3mins 37secs in his debut at the 26.2-mile distance, then captured the Chicago Marathon in 2:02:23 and has not competed since ahead of the matchup at Apalachee Regional Park.<\/p>\n
Ethiopia’s Berihu Aregawi, the world cross country runner-up to Kiplimo the past two events, lost the 10-kilometer showdown by nine seconds in 2023 and only three seconds in 2024.<\/p>\n
Aregawi was the 10,000m runner-up at the 2024 Paris Olympics.<\/p>\n
Ethiopian trials winner Bereket Nega and world half marathon runner-up Daniel Ebenyo of Kenya also figure into the title chase.<\/p>\n
France’s Jimmy Gressier, the reigning world 10,000m champion, and European champion Thierry Ndikumwenayo of Spain look to contend, as does Adriaan Wildschutt, the South African half-marathon record holder who makes his world cross country debut.<\/p>\n
On the women’s side, Kenya’s two-time defending champion Beatrice Chebet has withdrawn from the event, her agent announcing she will take a maternity break in 2026.<\/p>\n
With the reigning Olympic 5,000m and 10,000m champion out of the chase,\u00a0compatriot Agnes Ngetich, the world 10km record-holder, will be among those looked to bring Kenya a 10th consecutive women’s world cross country title.<\/p>\n
Ngetich was third behind Chebet in 2023 and fourth in a Kenyan top-four sweep in 2024 as well as the world 10,000m final in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
She has not competed in a cross country event since winning on home soil in the Sirikwa Classic last February.<\/p>\n
Maurine Chebor, 21, won the Kenyan trials last October and joins trials runner-up Brenda Jepchumba Kenei as hopefuls to extend her homeland’s reign.<\/p>\n
Ethiopian contenders include 2023 world under-20 champion Senayet Getachew and 2024 under-20 runner-up Asayech Ayichew, who captured the Ethiopian Championship in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo, the reigning Chicago Marathon champion, will attempt to win his third consecutive men’s crown at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1220,153],"class_list":{"0":"post-14575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uganda","8":"tag-afp","9":"tag-uganda"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}