Ethiopia\u2019s Yenenesh Shimket and Burundi\u2019s Rodrigue Kwizera stamped their authority at the Cross Internacional de la Constitucion \u2013 the sixth Gold meeting in this season\u2019s World Athletics Cross Country Tour \u2013 in Alcobendas on Sunday (30).<\/p>\n
On a cold but sunny day, 18-year-old Shimket beat Italy\u2019s world and Olympic 10,000m silver medallist Nadia Battocletti, while Kwizera overcame the challenge of Eritrea\u2019s Symon Amanuel to notch up his fourth victory in Alcobendas.<\/p>\n
Battocletti and Britain\u2019s European 10,000m bronze medallist Megan Keith took an early lead in the women\u2019s 8.1km race while Shimket and Kenya\u2019s Sheila Jebet positioned themselves close behind.<\/p>\n
Battocletti, the European cross-country champion, then began to increase the pace but Shimket and Jebet seemed to run comfortably at her shoulder with Keith towards the rear of the lead quartet. About 14 minutes into the race, Keith lost ground on the leaders while the Italian maintained her relentless pace, closely followed by Shimket and Jebet.<\/p>\n
Shimket seized her opportunity with three kilometres to go on the toughest section of the course and pushed hard to break away from Jebet and Battocletti with ease. The Ethiopian covered the penultimate 2.2km lap in 7:15 to open a seven-second margin on Jebet, herself another three seconds clear of Battocletti.<\/p>\n
On the final lap, Shimket proved her win in San Vittore Olona last weekend was no fluke as she extended her lead. Battocletti managed to catch and leave behind Jebet before embarking on the final kilometre.<\/p>\n
Shimket, having covered the final lap in 7:10, crossed the finish line 11 seconds ahead of Battocletti. Further back, Jebet kept Keith at bay to claim third.<\/p>\n
Italy\u2019s Yohanes Chiappinelli and Sweden\u2019s Oliver Lofqvist were the early leaders in the men\u2019s race, closely followed by Kwizera and Eritrean teenager Saymon Amanuel, two of the pre-race favourites.<\/p>\n
At exactly the same hilly point of the course where Shimket had broken away from her rivals, 18-year-old Amanuel surged ahead of the field and quickly built a six-second margin on Kwizera and Uganda\u2019s Samuel Cherop. The penultimate lap took the Eritrean just 6:18; by then, Kwizera was four seconds in arrears with Cherop in third another two seconds behind.<\/p>\n
In a thrilling finish to the 8.1km race, the Burundian put in a desperate chase to catch Amanuel and he finally did so with about 650m remaining. The 26-year-old went on to finish six seconds ahead of Amanuel while Uganda\u2019s Dismas Yeko overtook compatriot Cherop in the battle for third place.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very satisfied after my fourth win in a row here,\u201d said Kwizera. \u201cAlthough the Eritrean guy proved to be very strong, I remained confident of catching him and winning. After a busy November, tomorrow I\u2019m flying back to Burundi to spend a month with my family, then I\u2019ll travel to Ethiopia for a one-month stint before returning to Spain for the European Cross Country Team championships in February.\u201d<\/p>\n
(World Athletics)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ethiopia\u2019s Yenenesh Shimket and Burundi\u2019s Rodrigue Kwizera stamped their authority at the Cross Internacional de la Constitucion \u2013 the sixth Gold meeting in this season\u2019s World Athletics Cross Country Tour \u2013 in Alcobendas on Sunday (30). On a cold but sunny day, 18-year-old Shimket beat Italy\u2019s world and Olympic 10,000m silver medallist Nadia Battocletti, while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":47988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"editor_plus_copied_stylings":"{}","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1940],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-47987","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ethiopian-sport-news"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}