Korir after 4th Bloomsday title

Defending champion John Korir, the only three-time men’s winner of the Lilac Bloomsday Run, will return to Sunday’s 32nd annual running of the 12-kilometer event in search of another title.

“John Korir is a great competitor,” said Jon Neill, who coordinates Bloomsday’s elite athlete competitions. “He knows the course well and is the clear favorite coming into this year’s race. But he’ll be running against a formidable field, so he’ll have to be on top of his game to notch that fourth victory.”

Korir, a Kenyan whose other Bloomsday titles came in 2003 and 2005, will face a loaded filed of elite runners that includes fellow countryman Gilbert Okari, who won the event in 2006 and was scheduled to defend his title last spring before suffering an injury that forced him to withdraw.

Also expected to be a part of the elite men’s field are Kenyans Micah Kogo and Julius Kibet Koskei, Rwanda’s Dieudonne Disi and Tanzania’s John Yuda.

Korir won last year’s race in a time of 34 minutes, 18 seconds, edging out Yuda, who was clocked at 34:19. Kibet Koskei finished third and two other runners who placed in the top 10 in last year’s event – Kenya’s Nicholas Kamakya, who finished sixth, and Morocco’s Ridouane Harroufi, who finished seventh – are also entered. Five of the men’s elite competitors, Kogo, Moses Kigen, Robert Letting, George Kirwa Misoi and Linus Maiyo, have posted 10K times this spring that rank among the top 10 in the country.

Last year’s women’s elite champion, Edna Kiplagat, is not entered, which leaves the race for this year’s title wide open.

Kenya’s Catherine Ndereba, the 2007 World Marathon champion and a four-time winner of the Boston Marathon, is among the favorites. She finished fourth in last year’s Bloomsday run. Genoveva Kigen, another Kenyan, is also expected to challenge for the title after having already won the Azalea Trail Run and Crescent City Classic.

“Genoveva’s performances from this spring, along with her sizeable margins of victory in the races she won, show that she is coming to Bloomsday ready to challenge for the title,” Neill said

Mexico’s Saul Mendoza and Amanda McGrory will be back to defend the men’s and women’s wheelchair division titles they won in 2007.

More than 47,000 runners, joggers and walkers are expected to take part in this year’s Bloomsday event, with the elite athletes competing for more than $56,000 in prize money.