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Lead Stories: Thursday, January 8, 2009

World Cross Country Championships: An African Master Class

Posted March 31st, 2008 at 9:00 AM by Jimmie R. Markham

Section: News & Results, Cross Country, SoundOFF, Columns

Just how dominant were the Africans at yesterday’s IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Edinburgh, Scotland? Almost absolutely. Embarrassingly so. Of the 166 finishers, the top 18 were either African or African-born. Of the top 50, 88% were African or African-born. Even when we go all the way down to the top 100, Africans still accounted for 63% of the places! Of the bottom 50, only 30% were African or African-born. Figuratively speaking, Africans hardly even left the rest of the world’s cross-country runners table scraps. That’s dominance. Here’s a chart showing just how dominant Africans were in the race:

The African women were nearly as dominant. In comparison to the men’s race, 15 of the top 18 women were African or African-born. Here are the numbers for that race:

The fact that Kenenisa Bekele could stop for a full 15 seconds to put his shoe back on and still beat the first non-African finisher Jorge Torres of the United States by a minute and 25 seconds (not to mention that he beat “African beater” Craig Mottram by a full two minutes and 2 seconds!) shows just how far the rest of the world has to go to catch up with the Africans.
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