Overview
The senior individual titles were won by Kenyan athletes. Geoffrey Kipsang, a former junior champion and reigning world half marathon champion, took the men's title by a margin of eight seconds. [3] The 19-year-old Agnes Jebet Tirop was the women's champion, establishing herself as a senior athlete for the first time after her runner-up finish in the junior race at the 2013 edition. This made her the second youngest ever winner of that title, after Zola Budd in 1985. [4] Aside from these victories, it was Ethiopia that had the most success: Yasin Haji and Letesenbet Gidey were crowned the junior champions [5] [6] while the Ethiopian teams won the senior titles and had a clean sweep in the women's junior race. Bahrain was the only non-East African nation to win a medal, albeit with teams of entirely African expatriates.
The host choice reflected the increasing prominence of China in the world of athletics. Having only staged one major IAAF event before 2006, the country quickly rose to host the 2006 World Junior Championships, the 2008 Olympic athletics, [7] 2010 World Half Marathon Championships, [8] and 2014 IAAF World Race Walking Cup. The cross country event preceded Beijing's holding of the 2015 World Championships in Athletics later that year. [9] [10]
The course for the competition was a former horse racing course around 30 km from the city centre, which had hosted the Asian Cross Country Championships in 2005 as well as ten editions of the Chinese Cross Country Championships. [11] In addition to the main competition, mass participation races over 2 km and 4 km were held in the morning before the official opening ceremony, aimed at improving public engagement in the sport. [12]
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