By Feverpitch Reporter
World 10,000m champion, Linet Masai, and World 10km record holder, Micah Kogo, will make their highly anticipated half-marathon debuts in the Zayed Half Marathon in Abu Dhabi Thursday.
Since exploding on the world scene in 2007 in Mombasa where she won the IAAF World Junior Cross Country title, Masai has gone from strength to strength.
In 2008, she placed fourth in a new World junior 10,000m record in the Olympic Games in Beijing.
In 2009, she took the 10,000m gold in the IAAF World Championships in Berlin, having earlier in the year won silver in the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Amman, Jordan.
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After Berlin, she recorded one of the fastest ever times for 10 miles on the road with an excellent 50.38 to win the Dam tot Damloop race in the Netherlands.
She ended 2009 ranked number one for 10,000m by Track & Field News, was voted Kenyan Sportswoman of the Year and named Race Results Weekly Runner of the Year.
Kogo has been one of the top track and road runners of the past four years. He was ranked number one in the world for 10,000m in 2006 with an excellent 26:35.63 (fifth fastest ever) win in the Memorial van Damme meeting in Brussels.
In 2007, he posted the third fastest time ever for 10k — 27:07 in Parelloop 10k — and broke Haile Gebreselassie’s UK All-Comers 10k record in Manchester. Year 2008 saw the Kaptagat-based runner take the 10,000m bronze medal in the Olympic Games.
The 23-year-old returned to the Parelloop 10k in March 2009 and succeeded in breaking the World record, his time of 27:01 taking one second off Gebreselassie’s seven-year-old mark.
Masai and Kogo will be joined in Abu Dhabi by fellow PACE runners Josphat Ndambiri and Kiplimo Kimutai.
Japan-based Ndambiri placed fifth in the 2007 IAAF World Championships and recorded sub-27:00 minutes for 10,000m twice in 2009.
Kimutai improved his half-marathon personal best to 59:44 to finish second in the 2009 Great North Run and later placed seventh in the IAAF World Half-Marathon Championships in Birmingham.
