Boaz dominant, Colorado good enough

By Parker Morse

Less than two minutes into the men's race at the NCAA Cross Country Championships, the outcome already looked as inevitable as the tides. Four Kenyans in a pack had separated from the field, and the best of the rest were scrambling to catch up.

It came as no surprise to anyone. The man leading the breakaway, Eastern Michigan's Boaz Cheboiywo, had already bested many of the other contenders. Within a season he had achieved the kind of first-name-only recognition accorded to stars like Dathan (Ritzenhein), Alan (Webb), Abdi (Abdirahman) and Meb (Keflezighi), though having a family name which is nearly unpronounceable to Americans didn't hurt. Boaz's 44-second domination of Webb at the Great Lakes Regional the previous weekend and his 18-second win over Colorado's Jorge Torres (the top returning finisher from last year) at the pre-NCAA meet in October had reduced speculation from, "Who will win?" to "Will anyone beat Boaz?" Not much thought was given to who might upset him -- it could've been anyone.

Boaz himself was less confident. Before the race, he protested, "I cannot say I will win. I just want to run a perfect race for me, and to win the NCAA with a fast time." A sore hip flexor and associated achilles problems had forced him to miss six days of training since the Regional nine days before. "I was more worried about my achilles than about the other runners," he announced matter-of-factly after the race.

Still, when he moved to the front - "to get a clear view of the course" - he left nearly everyone else behind immediately. He covered the first mile in 4:24, dropping Alabama's Peter Kiprono to reduce the lead pack to three. "I could've sent Jorge and Dathan out with the leaders," said Colorado's coach Mark Wetmore. "It would've been suicide. We would've finished fifth." Boaz was looking ahead, but his companions David Kimani (the 1999 champion from Alabama) and Eliud Njubi of TCU were simply trying to hang on to him. Kimani didn't last another mile; his own achilles problems, which played a part in spoiling his title defense last year, took him off the course before two miles. He spent the rest of the day on crutches. Past the two mile mark, Njubi was also burning out. The pursuers swallowed him up, and Boaz had a gap of twenty seconds to play with. Njubi did not finish.

Meanwhile, the rest of the race was heating up behind Boaz. The initial leader of the chase was Stanford's Grant Robison, but by two miles Robison was overextended. "He spent a lot of the race hurting," said coach Vin Lananna afterward. The chase pack included Torres, Ritzenhein, Alistair Cragg and Daniel Lincoln of Arkansas, freshmen Matt Tegenkamp and Josh Spiker of Wisconsin, Stanford's Don Sage, Webb, and the Notre Dame duo of Luke Watson and Ryan Shay.

It was Torres who took off first. "I was hoping to make it a one-on-one race between me and Boaz," said Torres. Instead, he wound up alone, making no headway on Boaz but clear of the pursuit. Cragg tried to go with him, but Torres opened up a twenty-meter gap. "I found myself not closing it," said Cragg, "So I waited for the rest." Meanwhile, his teammates were making their way up through the pack. The team race was anyone's guess. Stanford had clumps of runners throughout the top half of the race. Lacking the "front-running firepower" of Colorado, Lananna told his runners to get out hard and establish position early. Wetmore took the opposite approach; altitude-trained Colorado started well back and used the length of the race to move up. "I've always said that living at altitude is an advantage, but training at altitude is a disadvantage," said Wetmore. "While our opponents are doing their repeat miles in 4:20, we're doing ours in 4:45... we're always petrified about being buried at the mile. It never changes." At four miles, Stanford was "killing us," said Wetmore.

Boaz sailed in comfortably ahead of Torres in 28:47. He took seven seconds from Keflezighi's 1997 course record of 28:54. Since the two mile mark his lead had narrowed imperceptibly, but Torres was unable to get closer than 19 seconds, and he had more pressure from behind. Cragg broke away from the pack, but then Ritzenhein came up fast. "He passed me just before the hill," said Cragg, "and I latched on to his back. I didn't want to go too soon." He moved with 150m to go, and got third by a second. Despite Ritzenhein's late-race charge, the team race was still wide open.

Notre Dame scored an impressive one-two with Watson and Shay finishing fifth and sixth; Stanford's leaders, Sage and Louie Luchini, were seventh and twelfth. Wisconsin got a good start as Tegenkamp and Spiker ran eighth and ninth. Colorado stayed ahead at the third runner, bringing in Torres' twin brother Ed in thirteenth, but Stanford's third (Ian Dobson in 20th) and fourth (Robison, 21st) were right together, and after Steve Slattery gave Colorado four runners in 28th, Seth Hejny closed Stanford's scoring in 43rd. Colorado waited anxiously for Sean Smith in 56th, the outcome still in doubt. Arkansas was competitive through their third runner, but lacked the depth of their title run in 2000.

The finish-line scoreboard first showed Stanford winning by a single point, but that unofficial scoring was done before the non-scoring individuals - runners like Boaz, whose teams did not qualify for Nationals - were taken out of the scoring places. Another unofficial adjusted scoring list gave the race to Colorado, 86 to 89; finally, 45 minutes after the race, the official scores were given as Colorado 90, Stanford 91. Any Colorado runner finishing one place lower would have lost the race, since a tie would've been broken by the sixth runner - Stanford's was Ryan Hall in 76th, and Colorado's was Aaron Blondeau, 134th. Painfully, Hejny was less than a second behind Villanova's Adrian Blincoe; though any one of the Stanford runners could have won the race with just one more place, Hejny came closest.

Defending champions Arkansas were a strong third, behind Cragg, Silverus Kimeli, and Lincoln. Coach John McDonnell had said that in order to win, they needed Fernando Cabada to step up; he was their fifth runner, and scored 58 points to the 37 scored by Stanford's fifth. "We're very disappointed," said Cragg. "No one knew us, nobody expected us to do well."

Alan Webb finished eleventh, echoing his words of the day before: "I'm happy that I survived." Webb's freshman cross country season was beyond most expectations; well-beaten by Ritzenhein at the 2000 Foot Locker Nationals and not the happiest runner at distances longer than a mile, he had flourished at Michigan, won several races including the Big Ten Championship, and was talked up as a runner with a shot at Nationals, despite being clobbered by Boaz at the regional. Webb's view of his chances was more realistic: "I hope he enjoys watching me struggle," he said of friendly rival Ritzenhein, and he resisted being cast into a "battle of the freshmen" which would exclude not only Boaz, but such experienced underclassmen as Tegenkamp.

The coronation of Boaz complete, the picture for next year is an exciting one. Cheboiywo claims to have two years remaining to complete his degree, though he admits he may stay to pursue a Masters and a fourth year of running. The rest of the top twenty is remarkably light on seniors, with all four leaders eligible to return next year and Watson and Shay the only seniors in the top 10. Many of the top teams can say the same; Stanford in particular, less than a second away from a title, graduates no seniors. "We'll use the same strategy next year at Indiana State," promised Lananna. "There you have it, a year early."