Top Runners On TV

8 JAN2011

Catch some of the UK's top athletes on television tomorrow as BBC1 provides live coverage of the BUPA Great Edinburgh Cross Country 8km International Team Challenge from Holyrood Park. The International Team Challenge is the fourth leg of this winter's IAAF World Cross Permit series and will be broadcast on BBC One/online at 1.00pm.

Much interest will focus on double European Champion Mo Farah after a strong showing over 10k in Italy last weekend. Farah finished a close second to Ethiopia's Imane Merga at the Boclassic 10km on New Year's Eve. He clocked 28:32.8 to finish one place higher than the previous year and comfortably beat Kenyan Olympic 5000m bronze medallist Edwin Soi.

Farah, who has been out training at the UKA/London Marathon altitude training camp in Iten, Kenya, will lead a strong Aviva Great Britain and Northern Ireland presence in Edinburgh. He will be joined in the team of nine by five of the Aviva GB & NI team members from December's SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Albufeira, Portugal.

The Aviva GB & NI teams (there is an U23/U20 team as well as the senior team) will face teams of nine from USA and Europe with the pick of the athletes being Oregon Track Club's Galen Rupp and nine-time European Cross Country champion Sergiy Lebid of Ukraine.