GEBRSELASSIE, DITA LEAD GREAT AUSTRALIAN RUN FIELDS
By David Monti
(c) 2008 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved. Used with permission.

Sunday's first edition of the HBA Great Australian Run in Melbourne boasts top-notch fields, led by Olympic gold medalists Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia and Constantine Dita of Romania.  Contested on a challenging figure-8 course which takes in many of Melbourne's most attractive streetscapes, the race starts and finishes in Albert Park, using the starting grid for the well known Formula 1 Grand Prix race.

"If conditions are right and Haile's in good form then we could see a rather special performance in the first running of the HBA Great Australian Run," said elite athletes manager, Andy Caine, of Nova International, the organizers of Britain's well-known Great Run series.

Gebrselassie faces very credible threats from Australian Craig Mottram, the 2005 IAAF World Championships 5000m bronze medalist, and Kenyan Patrick Makau, a two-time IAAF World Half-Marathon Championships silver medalist.  Tanzanian Samson Ramadhani, Austrian Güther Weidlinger, New Zealander Adrian Blincoe, Japanese Suehiro Ishikawa and Seigo Ikegami, and American Bobby Curtis are also in the field.

Dita, who comes off of a sub-par performance at the Chiba Ekiden in Japan last Monday, has two-time Olympic Marathon silver medalist Catherine Ndereba of Kenya, and three-time Olympian Benita Johnson of Australia to contend with.  Two solid Japanese athletes, 2008 Casablanca Marathon champion Kaori Yoshida, and two-time Olympic Megumi Yoshima, are also in the field.

According to the websites, Alltime-Athletics.com, and ARRS.net, no man has ever recorded a fast time for 15 km on Australian soil, defined as a mark faster than 43:17 (the IAAF-ratified world record is 41:29).  So, it seems likely that a men's all-comers record would be set, given the quality of the field.  On the women's side, Norwegian legend Ingrid Kristiansen has held the Australian all-comers record for 20 years.  She ran 48:24 in Adelaide back in 1988.

PHOTO: Haile Gebrselassie breaks the marathon world record at the 2007 real,- Berlin Marathon (photo courtesy of the real,- Berlin Marathon)