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Team
USA places four on medal stand at Bupa Great Edinburgh
Cross Country International Challenge
EDINBURGH
– Team USA placed four athletes on the medal
stand Saturday at the Bupa Great Edinburgh Cross
Country International Challenge at Holyrood Park
in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Teams from the United States, Great Britain and
Northern Ireland and a select European team
competed in men’s and women’s junior and
senior races. Each team in the International Team
Challenge consisted of nine athletes per team (six
on the junior teams) with the first six athletes
per team scoring. Great Britain and Northern
Ireland took the overall team title, scoring a
total 144 points over Team USA’s 196. In cross
country, the team with the lowest overall score
wins.
In the first race of the day, the junior men’s 6
km, Kirubel Erassa (Grayson, Ga.)
battled with Mark Shaw and Kieron Clements of
Great Britain over the first 2 km lap. During the
second lap, Shaw and Clements gapped Erassa. Over
the final lap, Erassa, a freshman at Oklahoma
State University, steadily closed the gap,
catching Clements then Shaw. As Erassa
sprinted to the line for the win in 1956, Clements
overtook his teammate to take the runner-up spot
one second later. Shaw ran 19:59.
In the junior women’s 4 km, Erin Finn
(West Bloomfield, Mich.), led the field for the
first one kilometer before European Junior
champion Emelia Gorecka of Great Britain took
charge and steadily pulled away to win in 14:48.
Aisling Cuffe (Cornwall on
Hudson, N.Y.) ran 15:09 for the runner-up finish,
while Molly Siedel (Hartland,
Wisc.) took third in 15:16.
The senior men’s 8 km saw the European team’s
Ayad Lamdassem and Atelaw Bekele lead the field
for the first two laps but going into the third
lap, Team USA’s Jon Grey
(Minneapolis, Minn.) took command of the race.
Going into the final lap, Lamdassem and Bekele
began to pull away from Grey while Bobby
Mack (Raleigh, N.C.) emerged from the
chase pack. Over the final 400 meters, it
looked as though the European team would take the
top-two spots Lamdassem pulled clear of Bekele but
Mack charged down the finishing straight to edge
Bekele for the runner-up position. Lamdassem
was timed in 25:44 while Mack and Bekele were
given the same time of 25:47. Grey held on
for fourth in 25:52.
In the final race of the day, Fionnuala Britton
scored another individual win for Europe,
dominating the field with a 20 second win as she
ran 21:32 in the senior women’s 6 km.
Neely Spence (Shippensburg, Pa.) led Team
USA with a fourth-place finish, running 22:11.
A video replay of the race will be available at www.bbc.co.uk/sport
until January 14. For more information and
complete results, visit www.greatrun.org.
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About
USA Track & Field
USA Track & Field (USATF) is the National
Governing Body for track & field,
long-distance running and race walking in the
United States. USATF encompasses the world's
oldest organized sports, the World's #1 Track
& Field Team, the most-watched events at the
Olympics, the #1 high school and junior high
school participatory sport, and more than 30
million adult runners in the United States: www.usatf.org. |
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