Recently crowned world marathon champion set to face Olympic marathon champion Stephen Kiprotich.. Thurs, 1 Oct, 2015 World marathon champion Ghirmay Ghebreslassie and Olympic marathon champion Stephen Kiprotich are set to clash in the Zevenheuvelenloop in Nijmegen on 15 November.
Known as the Seven Hills Run in English, the Zevenheuvelenloop has been a mainstay on the road-racing calendar since 1984. And despite the undulating profile of the course, it is still a fast course: Leonard Komon (41:13) and Tirunesh Dibaba (46:29) set world 15km records in this race in 2010 and 2009 respectively.
Ghebreslassie caused one of the biggest upsets of the IAAF World Championships in Beijing where the Eritrean defeated one of the strongest fields ever assembled for a championship marathon including Dennis Kimetto, Wilson Kipsang, Lelisa Desisa and Kiprotich, who was looking to retain his world marathon title.
Ghebreslassie will be making his racing debut over 15km in November although Kiprotich does have an affiliation with the Zevenheuvenlenloop. At the age of 18, Kiprotich made his road-racing debut in this race back in 2007 where he finished fourth in a still-standing lifetime best of 44:28 in a race won by Ethiopian track great Sileshi Sihine.
Since then, Kiprotich has gone on to win world and Olympic titles at the marathon and holds the Ugandan record at 2:06:33 for the distance.
The women’s race will feature two of the Netherlands’ leading distance runners: Susan Kuijken and Jip Vastenburg. Kuijken made the world 5000m final in Beijing and finished tenth in the 10,000m with Vastenburg placing eleventh over 10,000m.
Previous winners of this race include Ingrid Kristiansen, Haile Gebrselassie, Khalid Skah, Tegla Loroupe, Liz McColgan, Berhane Adere and Tirunesh Dibaba.
Photo courtesy of Getty Images
News source – Worldrunning.com