At the moment, there is an athlete clearly stronger than any other in the World, and is Geoffrey Mutai. Looking at the big gap between him and Kisorio during Trials, and knowing that Ethiopian are not very strong, the final match can be between Geoffrey and Kipsiro.

There is a reason for this : Geoffrey is preparing Marathon, maintaining all the workouts of long speed endurance, and this gives him more specific endurance than the others.

Last year, Wilson Kiprop (coming from Prague Marathon) and Geoffrey were able to run 27'26" and 27'27" in altitude, and Wilson won WHM beating Zersenay Tadesse.

Two years ago, I had the same situation with Moses Mosop : he won very easy Kenyan Trials, using a program with a lot of volume and at the same time high intensity, and could win WCCCh in Amman in very easy way, if allowed to continue with his program. Instead, the head coach of Kenya for cross country (Julius Kirwa) decided to reduce a lot all the volume, going for peed only during the last 4 weeks, and the Kenyan Team disappeared, with nobody able to finish on the podium.

The point now is as follows : Can AK allow Geoffrey in staying in his camp, without joining the official training camp of the Team ? Because he wants running Boston Marathon, and in the official camp nobody has ideas about what a marathon runner has to do.

Exactly for this reason I decided that Mosop and Florence Kiplagat were not interested in running WCCCh, also if they could look for trying to win.

But Geoffrey is too much faster than the other Kenyans.

So, if AK allows him to continue his preparation, they go to win WCC at 95%, but if they don't allow and Geoffrey decides not to go in the Team, they risk to lose the Championships from Kipsiro (I don't believe in Ethiopians, but nobody knows what Yanev can run today in their Trials).

Preparing marathon in the modern way, it's possible to be very much competitive in a Cross, 4 weeks before. But preparing a cross with the Kenyan system, you can forget that is possible to run a marathon 4 weeks later.