Edinburgh results underline European decline

Top athletics officials were meeting yesterday to discuss how to arrest Europe's precipitous decline in cross country running after Ethiopian runners dominated the World Championships.

Ethiopia, led by Kenenisa Bekele and Tirunesh Dibaba in the senior events, won all four individual gold medals and two of the team titles on Sunday in Edinburgh - Kenya taking the other two. That was no surprise as Africa have totally dominated cross country for 25 years.

The men's team race has been won by Ethiopia or Kenya every year since 1981 in both the long and now-discontinued short races and the same two have shared the junior men's team race since 1982.

On the women's side only Portugal, in 1994, have interrupted the African dominance in the last 17 years.

Nobody in the sport is complaining about that - east Africa's commitment to cross country is what has kept it buoyant for two decades.

What worries those who run the sport, however, is that much of the rest of the world, and particularly the former stronghold of Europe, appears to have given up trying to compete.

In the senior men's race on Sunday there were only two Europeans in the top 50 - Spaniards Juan Carlos De La Ossa and Ayad Lamdassem.

The women fared slightly better with two Britons, Liz and Hayley Yelling and France's Saadia Bourgailh Haddioui in the top 30, as well as fifth-finisher Hilda Kibet, who converted to the Netherlands from Kenya a year ago.

When the event was first held in 1973, 85 per cent of the competitors were European but in Sunday's races that figure had dropped below 30 per cent.