Jacob Kiplimo gained his third consecutive males’s world cross nation title. Photograph: AFP
MIAMI:
Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo, the reigning Chicago Marathon champion, gained his third consecutive males’s crown on Saturday on the World Cross Nation Championships.
The 25-year-old accomplished the hat-trick over 10 kilometers in a profitable time of 28min 18sec with Ethiopia’s Berihu Aregawi 18sec again in a 3rd consecutive runner-up end, with Kenya’s Daniel Ebenyo third in 28:45.
Kiplimo turned solely the fourth man to win three world cross nation titles in a row after Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele (2002-2006) and the Kenyans Paul Tergat (1995-1999) and John Ngugi (1986-1989).
“To win thrice, I am so completely satisfied about it,” Kiplimo mentioned. “I feel it is in regards to the consistency in your coaching. One other factor it is about is believing in your self.”
Kiplimo was final yr’s London Marathon runner-up in 2hr 3min 37sec in his debut on the 26.2-mile distance, then captured the Chicago Marathon in 2:02:23 final October, a fast turnaround that added to the problem of defending his title.
“In the present day was the toughest one,” Kiplimo mentioned.
Agnes Ngetich, the world 10km report holder, took the ladies’s title in 31:28 over 10km to ship Kenya a tenth consecutive girls’s crown at Apalachee Regional Park in Tallahassee, Florida.
Ngetich defeated Uganda’s Pleasure Cheptoyek by 42 seconds in a dominant efficiency with Ethiopia’s Senayet Getachew third in 32:13 over a course that includes sand, water and dirt zones plus boundaries resembling fallen logs.
Within the males’s last, Kiplimo was second by two seconds on the mid-race mark and with two kilometers remaining was alongside Aregawi and world half marathon runner-up Ebenyo.
Kiplimo surged forward by eight seconds on Aregawi getting into the ultimate kilometer and raced throughout the end line to cheers.
He doesn’t count on to hunt a fourth world cross nation crown as he’ll flip his consideration to the marathon.
“I feel now possibly this one goes to be the final one due to the marathon… as a result of I will be coaching for the marathon,” Kiplimo mentioned.
Aregawi, the ten,000m runner-up on the 2024 Paris Olympics, had misplaced by 9 seconds to Kiplimo in 2023 and by solely three seconds in 2024 within the two prior editions of the occasion.
Jimmy Gressier, the Frenchman who had been tipped for a podium end after his shock 10,000m victory on the monitor eventually yr’s world championships, was a disappointing fifteenth.
Ngetich dominates
Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet, the reigning 5,000 and 10,000m champion, didn’t search a 3rd consecutive girls’s title as a result of she is starting a 2026 maternity break.
That left Ngetich to proceed Kenya’s title streak and he or she did so in epic vogue.
Ngetich grabbed the early lead and started to stretch a spot after two kilometers, pulling away to run alone by way of the Florida pine bushes and attain the midpoint at 15:20.
Ngetich led by 35 seconds after seven kilometers and stayed in command to the end to win by the second-largest margin within the race’s historical past, trailing solely the 1980 victory of Norway’s Greta Waitz by 44 seconds over 4.82km.
It was Ngetich’s first cross nation competitors since profitable on house soil in final February’s Sirikwa Basic.
Ngetich was third behind Chebet on the 2023 worlds and fourth in a Kenyan top-four sweep in 2024.
Ethiopia swept the boys’s and ladies’s group titles with Kenya second and Uganda third in every.
