Chester-le-Street's Scottish 4K champion Freya Murray lines up against some of the world’s leading women athletes in this afternoon’s televised Great Edinburgh Cross Country International.
Murray, who has already qualified for the Scottish Commonwealth Games team travelling to India this summer, has shown excellent form this season, finishing ninth in the European Cross Country Championships in Dublin last month to help Great Britain take silver in the senior women’s team race.
And she was one of the few British athletes to beat the weather and make it to the Lotto Crosscup IAAF permit meeting in Brussels, finishing an excellent fifth in a highquality competition as she prepared for today’s 6K test on home soil.
This will be much tougher, however, as she prepares for the 5.8K event in Holyrood Park against Ethiopian Tirunesh Dibaba, arguably the world’s top women distance runner after winning the 5,000m and 10,000m at the Beijing Olympics, and three World cross country titles, the last in Edinburgh in 2008.
Dibaba will be a strong favourite, but she faces some stiff opposition, including Kenya’s 5000m World champion Vivian Cheruiyot and Britain’s newly-crowned European Cross Country champion Hayley Yelling-Higham.
The brilliant three-times European junior cross country champion Steph Twell makes her debut on home soil after switching allegiance from England to Scotland last year.
The star-studded men’s 9K race is headed by Ethiopia’s reigning World champion, Gebre Gebremariam, who will be challenged by four-times World 10,000m champion Kenenisa Bekele, who won this event in 2007.
There is also a 4.2K men’s race, in which Great Britain’s top miler, Andy Baddeley faces a stiff challenge from Mo Farah as he goes for a hattrick of victories in the Scottish capital. There will be a strong contingent of North- East athletes including New Marske’s World Junior Cross Country Championships international Ricky Stephenson and Morpeth Harriers Jonny Taylor, Nick Swinburn, Matt Nicholson and Chris Sampson.
The meeting is being televised on BBC 1 between 1- 2.30pm.
■ The North-East Indoor Championships are held at Gateshead International Stadium today and tomorrow.
■ North-East company Start Fitness is to sponsor the Blaydon Race, traditionally held on June 9, for the next three years.
■ The Loftus Poultry Run, postponed because of bad weather before Christmas, has been re-arranged for Sunday, January 31st (11am start).
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