Ethiopia’s Edris looking for Italian hat-trick at Cinque Mulini Race

Muktar Edris (Photo: Giancarlo Colombo)
Muktar Edris (Photo: Giancarlo Colombo)

The legendary Cinque Mulini – Five Mills – Cross Country race in San Vittore Olona, an IAAF Cross Country Permit Meeting, continues to maintain its place in the history of the discipline with its 81st edition on Sunday.

Ethiopia’s rising star Muktar Edris, the 2012 IAAF World Junior Championships 5000m gold medallist and reigning African junior cross country champion, , will be looking to score a hat-trick in the major Italian Cross Country races during an outstanding winter in which he also won the Campaccio and the Cross della Vallagarina races in January.

In these two races he showed his variety of tactic skills, winning in a dramatic final sprint at the IAAF Cross Country Permit Meeting in San Giorgio su Legnano on 6 January and then running at the front from the start in Rovereto a week later.

Edris, who clocked 13:04.34 in the Samsung Diamond League meeting in Paris last summer, has also run frequently on the roads in Italy in the last few months. He finished second in both the Giro di Trento back in October and at then the Boclassic in New Year’s Eve, the latter behind the current World Cross Country champion and his compatriot Imane Merga.

The last Ethiopian winner in San Vittore Olona was Hunengnaw Mesfin in 2010. In the past editions, famous Ethiopian stars who triumphed in the popular Italian race were Fita Bayesa, who won four consecutive times from 1992 to 1995, and the 12-time IAAF World Cross Country Championships winner Kenenisa Bekele in 2002.

Read more at IAAF.org