McCambridge out of Japan event

ATHLETICS / News: Ireland's smallest team for the World Cross Country was made even smaller after Maria McCambridge's decision not to travel to Fukuoka, Japan, this weekend. A hip injury has forced McCambridge out of the event, which leaves just four Irish athletes to compete over the next two days.

Men's national champion Vinnie Mulvey will compete in Sunday's long-course race, while Rosemary Ryan, who finished second to McCambridge in the women's national championships, goes in tomorrow's women's long course. National junior champions Stephen Scullion and Sara Treacy complete the Irish interest, easily the smallest in the 34-year history of the event.

Alistair Cragg turned down the chance to convert his superb form in recent weeks to cross country, despite finishing fourth over 3,000 metres, arguably the most competitive event, at the World Indoor Championships in Moscow earlier this month. Cragg is more concerned about staying free of injury for the European Championships in Gothenburg in August.

That decision means Cragg may have missed his best chance to medal in the event. From next year, when the championships go to Kenya's coastal town of Mombasa, the event reverts to its original two-race (instead of four-race) and one-day format: 12 kilometres for men and eight kilometres for women.

For Cragg, however, the 12km race is possibly a little long, while the depth of African talent from next year on will be even greater.

The 4km short-course races were introduced in 1998, the year Sonia O'Sullivan famously won the double, with the idea of breaking up African dominance. Yet the Africans dominated both races, so last year the IAAF agreed to scrap the short race - thus returning the world cross country to its traditional status as the most difficult distance race in the world.

It means Fukuoka will also be the last chance for Ethiopia's Kenenisa Bekele to repeat his short-long-course double and claim the lion's share of the $100,000 first-place prize money.

Bekele intends to chase his fifth successive double, which would mark yet another extraordinary achievement in the career of the 23-year-old Olympic and World 10,000 metres champion, who in Moscow won his first world indoor title at 3,000 metres - making him the only man to win world titles on indoor and outdoor tracks and cross country.

His main challenger is likely to be 19-year-old Kenyan Augustine Choge - winner of the junior race a year ago - who won the 5,000 metres at the Commonwealth Games in Australia less than two weeks ago, beating home favourite Craig Mottram and another Kenyan, Benjamin Limo. All three race this weekend.

Choge is coached by the Irish missionary brother Colm O'Connell, who has helped develop numerous Kenyan champions over the past 30 years.

"Choge is the most versatile athlete that I have coached yet," says O'Connell.