Bedan Karoki trains sights on Gifu Half title defence
What you need to know:
- Karoki won the race last year
- Karoki upset the Eritrean favourite and defending champion Zersenay Tadese to win the fourth edition of the Gifu Seiryu event
World Cross Country silver medallist Bedan Karoki has said he will attempt to defend the Gifu Seiryu Half Marathon title in Japan on 17 May.
Karoki won the race last year, which is also an IAAF Silver Label Road Race, and will be using this year’s course as part of the preparations for the World Athletics Championships set for China in August.
The 24-year-old athlete from Nyandarua, who claimed silver in 10,000m at the 2011 Maputo All Africa Games before finishing fifth at the 2012 London Olympic Games over the same distance, won the World Cross Country silver medal behind compatriot Geoffrey Kipsang Kamworor in March in Guiyang, China.
“After missing the World Championships in Moscow last year, I want to try out in China. I hope everything will go as planned,” said Karoki, who is currently training in Japan. “The weather will be hot and humid in August but I am used to that.”
Last year, Karoki upset the Eritrean favourite and defending champion Zersenay Tadese to win the fourth edition of the Gifu Seiryu event in a new course record of 1:00:02, eclipsing the previous time of 1:00:31 set by Tadese in 2013.
Karoki, who boasts of personal best 59:23 from his victory at last year’s Philadelphia Half Marathon, braces for stiff challenge from among others Ethiopia’s 2008 Olympic marathon bronze medallist Tsegaye Kebede and Kenya’s James Rungaru, who won the Nice Half Marathon on April 26 in a personal best of 1:00:12.
JUMA SET TO FEATURE
Tanzania’s Ismail Juma, ninth at the World Cross Country Championships in Guiyang, will be hoping to make a substantial revision of his half marathon best of 1:02:42.
The 2012 World Half Marathon bronze medallist Paskalia Chepkorir is favourite in the women’s race. Chepkorir, whose boasts of a personal best of 1:07:17, is the fastest in the women’s field that has Ethiopia’s Atsede Baysa (PB 1:07:33).
Also in the field is Bahrain’s Asian Games marathon champion Eunice Jepkirui, who recorded a best of 1:08:31 last year and showed good form in winning the Nagoya Marathon last month.
