Determined Asbel to make Melbourne meet a classic
?I?m here in Australia (for) my first time. I?ve never stepped my foot on the soil of Australia,? said the lanky six foot two inch Kenyan, who grew up in the farming village of Kaptinga, 20 kilometres outside of Eldoret.?My role model who I used to watch some years back run in Australia - Noah Ngeny - become Olympic Champion in Sydney, in year 2000.
?To run here in Australia has a lot of meaning to me.?
Ngeny caused one of the great upsets of the Sydney Games, defeating Moroccan maestro Hicham El Guerrouj, to become just the third Kenyan in history to claim the Olympic metric mile crown ? Kiprop became the fourth.
?I got a call from my manager that I was going to race in Australia. It was great. I never knew it was so far. I have been travelling for 13 hours from Dubai,? said Kiprop, who flew into Melbourne this morning ahead of the March 4 track meet at Olympic Park.
The IAAF-sanctioned Melbourne Track Classic will be Kiprop?s first outdoor hitout of 2010, following a ?not quite fast? 3:58.03 indoors in late January, in which he placed second to American Bernard Lagat in the Wannamaker Mile, in New York. Kiprop most recently clocked 1:47.25 to place fourth over 800 metres at the GE Galan Indoor Meet in Stockholm, in early February.
?For me with my height, I don?t think I was good enough to run indoors.?
However, for Kiprop - whose first name ?Asbel? means ?determined?- a return to outdoor racing is very much to his liking, as is renewing his rivalry with New Zealand Olympic runner-up Nick Willis, for the first time since racing in Beijing?s National Stadium.
?I never raced him since the Olympics. This is the first time to meet him (again), because he never run last year. I hope that the competition will be really quite hard.?
?My intent is to run like 3:32, is my intention because it is still early in the season,? said Kiprop, whose personal best stands at 3:31.20.
With Willis previously indicating that a win in Melbourne was of the utmost importance to him and Australian national champion Jeff Riseley returning to competition and likely to take it up to the Olympic champion, a fast race appears inevitable.
Kiprop joins a strong cast of international elites en route to Melbourne for the Melbourne Track Classic, including countryman David Rudisha (800m) dual American Olympic medallist David Neville (400m), Finland's 2007 world champion Tero Pitkamaki (javelin) and world and Olympic shot put champion Valerie Vili (shot put) from New Zealand. The local charge will be led by world and Olympic champion pole vaulter Steve Hooker, and women?s discus world champion Dani Samuels.
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