KENYAN Bernard Kipyego is certainly no stranger to success in Edinburgh but, on his arrival in the Capital direct from his training base high up at Eldoret in his native country, Kipyego played down his chances of completing a terrific double and instead tipped fellow countryman Eliud Kipchoge to triumph in the Great Edinburgh International Cross Country tomorrow.
Kipyego won the BUPA Great Edinburgh 10k Run last May, beating a formidable rival Boniface Kiprop of Uganda, in a sprint finish and he had not exactly been hanging around when he placed tenth in the World Cross Country Championships in Holyrood Park
just over a month previously, despite facing a field of the very best distance runners on the planet.
"I didn't do well last year and I expect to be in the middle category tomorrow," he claimed with typical Kenyan modesty and pointing to the fact that Kipchoge had won a race in Italy last weekend in a close finish.
"I've been training hard but this is my first race."
Yet those who know him well believe he could be the one to beat tomorrow with much depending on the state of the course, his successes last year in the two Great Runs, Edinburgh and the South, indicating a preference for firm surfaces.
A World Junior silver medallist at St Etienne in 2005, the 22-year-old Kipyego was disappointed with his Edinburgh World performance given that he had finished third in the senior race on home soil in the suffocating humidity of Mombasa the previous year.
But he will have a chance for revenge tomorrow against one of the men who beat him on both occasions, the remarkable Zersenay Tadesse of Eritrea, who was the World Cross champion in Mombasa in 2007.
Also entered are Boniface Kiprop, the Commonwealth 10,000m champion and another Commonwealth champion from Melbourne 2006, Augustine Choge (Kenya), who took gold in the 5000 metres.
Zersenay however may be more interested in his reunion with three Shettleston Harriers: Mengiteab, Woldemichael and Twelde, who were granted political asylum after last year's World Cross in Edinburgh and will represent the West of Scotland in the Inter-District race. The leading Scot in the men's international race will almost certainly be Olympic steeplechaser Andrew Lemoncello, who was a splendid third in the Northern Ireland International in Antrim last Saturday.
Fifer Lemoncello, who is now based at altitude at Flagstaff, Colorado, makes no bones about his preference for a hard surface.
He said: "I know I'm running well just now and I want to continue to do that and be up there.
"There's a few Americans in the race and I want to be up with them."
Lemoncello also has a point to prove to the British selectors who left him out of the team for last month's European Championships in Brussels. "I'd like to go well and show these guys. I definitely believe I could have made an impact on how the team did."
Freya Murray (Edinburgh AC) was also third in Antrim and also has a point to prove over her European omission.
She believes she can make her running do the talking against a field with several of the British team from Brussels including junior champion Steph Twell, who was also senior winner in Antrim. Murray leads an East team which includes Edel Mooney (Lothian), Lyn Wilson (Carnethy), Rosie Smith (Hunter's BT) and Jennifer MacLean (EAC).
Linet Masai and Vivian Cheruiyot (both Kenya), Mestawot Tufa (Ethiopia) Emily Brown (USA) and Jessica Augusto and Anne Felix, both of Portugal are among the leading foreign challengers.
