A mud splattered Sergiy Lebid wins his sixth European Cross Country title - Tilburg 2005 (© Hasse Sjögren)
With six of the first eight from last week’s European Cross Country Championships in action, Sunday’s Lotto Iris Crosscup - IAAF Cross Country Permit - in Brussels has been set up as the revenge race of Tilburg.
Can Lebid’s momentum be halted?
Organiser Jos Van Roy would like nothing more than to see home favourite Tom Van Hooste, who was seventh last weekend, come home in front but he will face a stiff task.
Van Hooste has certainly lit up this race with his positive running in recent years, but whether he can shake off Europe’s top cross country runner Sergiy Lebid is doubtful.
The Ukrainian star won his sixth European cross-country title in Tilburg and has plenty of experience on the Brussels course, finishing second there in each of the last two years and he’ll be looking to go one better on Sunday.
Driss Maazouzi, the bronze medallist in Tilburg, lines up with three of his fellow winning French side from last week - Bouabdellah Tahri (fifth), Mokhtar Benhari (sixth) and Khalid Zoubaa (eighth) and they can all be expected to be among the leaders.
One thing is certain. If any of them hope to beat Lebid over the 10.5Km course, they need to have opened a gap well before the finishing straight because as he showed once again when winning in Tilburg, he is virtually unbeatable when it comes to a sprint finish.
Portugal’s four-time European Cross Country champion Paulo Guerra is also in action, as his Belgium’s twice world cross-country champion Mohammed Mourhit who is a former winner of this race - but neither will be expected to be a threat to the power of Lebid, so it could be left to the Africans to try and stop him.
The likes of Kimwongo, Langat, Kemeli, Chemweno, Ngetich and Shadrack Kosgei might not be household names but they will still be looking to take the race to Lebid in a bid to diminish his kicking ability at the finish.
Yusuf Jamal takes on the top Europeans
The women’s race might not feature the first two from Tilburg, with Lornah Kiplagat opening her training centre in Kenya and Germany’s Sabrina Mockenhaupt in Gran Canaria for a photo shoot for Puma, but the next three from the European Championships are in action.
Sweden’s bronze medallist Johanna Nilsson, the NCAA champion, Serbia and Montenegro’s Olivera Jevtic and Hungarian star Aniko Kalovics will be looking to boost their confidence with victories, as will Polish star Justyna Bak and Ethiopian Teyiba Erkesso, the bronze medallist over 4k at the 2004 World Cross Country Championships.
Bahraini Maryam Yusuf Jamal, the former Ethiopian Zenebech Tola, will also be among the pacesetters. The current No. 1 IAAF ranked in the 1500m/mile, the 21-year-old will returns to action after a strong pair of road race victories - at last weekend’s Course de Noël 5.25Km road race in Sion, Switzerland and the 4.78Km Course de l'Escalade in Geneva a week earlier.
The usual Kenyan contingent also sees Cheruto, Chepkoech and Wanjiku in action.
Bob Frank for the IAAF