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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Bloomsday Current Champ Fighting Tale Of The Red Tape

Josphat Machuka has already hit the tape for Bloomsday.

Unfortunately, for the Kenyan sensation, the tape is red and not the finish line of the 12-kilometer race in downtown Spokane that he has won the past two years.

Bloomsday officials have discovered bureaucracy is doing what Doomsday Hill couldn’t - slow down Machuka.

Don Kardong, Bloomsday elite athlete coordinator, said Machuka plans to defend his title if he can solve his visa problems and get out of Nairobi in time for the race.

Machuka simply destroyed everything about Bloomsday a year ago, leaving the best of a world-class field a staggering 28 seconds behind while cutting 14 seconds off the course record. He ran the 7.4-mile course in 33 minutes, 41 seconds to become only the second two-time winner and the first to do it back-to-back.

However, Machuka’s bid to become the first three-time champion of the men’s race hit a snag just days before Sunday’s 20th running of the race.

The office of Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., has been asked to intercede, Kardong said.

“Our office is doing everything we can to try and get last year’s winner to Spokane in time for the race,” Gorton press secretary Heidi Kelly in Washington, D.C., told the Associated Press. “We haven’t received an answer. Hopefully, we will have made some progress by tomorrow.”

Kardong said Machuka stayed in Kenya to prepare for its upcoming Olympic Trials but wanted to return to Spokane to defend his title.

“Apparently it is easier to get a visa to compete for a year than for one race,” Kardong said Tuesday morning in announcing the elite field.

Delillah Asiago, a 24-year-old Kenyan who was even more dominating than her countryman, will return to defend her title. Asiago shattered the course record by 26 seconds, running 38:19 to win by 2:06. She is competing out of Albuquerque, N.M.

Bloomsday is the inaugural championship race for the PRRO World Road Running Championship.

World-class road racers had the opportunity of accumulating points at 16 different races from January 1995 through a race last Sunday in Washington D.C. The top 25 finishers are eligible for Bloomsday but for various reasons, including the fact this is an Olympic year, only 15 men and 10 women are entered.

They are competing, however, for a record purse of $100,000, with the winning male and female earning $25,000. The total purse has doubled from last year when the winners received $7,000.

Asiago, 24, finished second in the PRRO Circuit standing. Kardong expects her top competition to be 32-year-old South African Colleen De Reuck, who finished fifth in the recent World Cross Country Championships.

Another Olympian in the field is Anne Hare, who will run the 5,000 for New Zealand. Hare, 31, finished seventh in Bloomsday in 1990.

Spokane runner Kim Jones, 38, is entered. Last year she finished fifth, her best performance in her hometown race. She went on to place fourth in the PRRO standings.

Machuka could have as tough a time winning Bloomsday as he has getting here. Countryman Lazarus Nyakeraka, 20, won two PRRO Circuit races and was the top pointwinner. Simon Morolong, 22, of South Africa, should also challenge after finishing fourth in the standings.

Simon Karori, a 36-year-old Kenyan, was fourth at Bloomsday last year and fifth in the PRRO standings. Ibrahim Kinuthia, a 32-year-old Kenyan, was third last year.

The elite women will start Sunday’s race at 8:45 a.m., 15 minutes before the rest of the expected 60,000 participants. The elite men go off at 8:58.

Jean Driscoll returns to go for her eighth straight Bloomsday wheelchair victory. Paul Wiggins, who ended Craig Blanchette’s eight-year run in the men’s open wheelchair division, is back, as is Blanchette.

, DataTimes MEMO: Changed from Idaho edition.

Changed from Idaho edition.