On Athletics Men Score 14 Points To Dominate Field; Puma Elite Women Edge Hansons-Brooks

By David Woods for DyeStat

Amid gathering twilight Thursday at Austin, Texas, the duo of Edwin Kurgat and Alicia Monson underscored how good they are at cross country.

Other winners included three male milers -- Yared Nuguse, Oliver Hoare, Mario Garcia Romo -- plus the On Athletics Club and pro version of this sport.

Kurgat, in his first meaningful race in nearly 18 months, won the men’s individual title at the FitnessBank Cross Champs. Monson was women’s champion.

RACE VIDEOS | INTERVIEWS

It is an event held in conjunction with a running trade show and designed as a team event for pros. Scoring is for four runners, as it is at a World Championships, rather than five.

The one-mile course around St. Stephens School featured multiple surfaces (track, grass, dirt, mud), hay bales, turns and switchbacks.

“Running track all year is kind of demanding on your body,” Monson said. “So being able to just come out and do something where you’re not really focused on time . . . you’re just kind of working on that strength.

“And it’s really fun. You don’t usually do cross country in the States as a professional.”

Monson bookended a momentous year with cross country wins, having taken the U.S. title Jan. 8 in San Diego. In between, she was 13th in the 10,000 meters in the World Championships at Eugene, Ore., and became the No. 3 American ever (14:31.11) at 5,000.

She covered the 8-kilometer course in 26:55.7, pulling away from Emily Infeld and Ednah Kurgat on the last loop. Infeld was second in 27:01.7 and Kurgat third in 27:07.9.

U.S. 10-mile champion Fiona O’Keeffe, fourth in 27:19.8, led Puma Elite to the team title. Jesse Cardin was fifth in 27:34.7 and steeplechaser Courtney Wayment sixth in 27:35.7.

Monson represents On Athletics, which didn’t have the requisite four for a team score.

Puma Elite trailed Hansons-Brooks by 19 points at the mile mark and ended up winning 17-19. Those were the only two teams to finish four women.

The men’s race, deeper and bigger, was nonetheless dominated by On Athletics. Nuguse, Hoare, Morgan McDonald and Geordie Beamish went 2-3-4-5 and scored 14 points to runner-up HOKA NAZ Elite’s 42.

Hoare once led by nearly nine seconds and was first at the mile (4:27.8), two-mile (9:03.8) and three-mile (13:45.3). He had not run cross country since the 2019 NCAAs for Wisconsin. He said he went out too hard, “expecting to like settle,” and never did.

He was then overtaken by Kurgat and Kiptoo, two Kenyans out of Iowa State.

“I’ve run many times with him,” Kurgat said. “I knew this was the same thing we used to do. So just grind and run and work hard.”

Kurgat finished the 8K in 23:27.5 in his first meaningful race since June 2021, when he dropped out of the NCAA track 10,000. He was NCAA cross country champion in 2019. Kurgat said he wanted to show “that I’m back and ready to start running fast again,” and pursuing a pro contract.

Next came Nuguse, 23:30.6; Hoare, 23:32.7; McDonald, 23:42.10; Beamish, 23:42.6.

Kiptoo was sixth in 23:44.9, NCAA 5,000 champ Olin Hacker seventh in 23:46.2 and Romo, also of On Athletics, ninth in 23:55.6.

Sam Chelanga, a two-time NCAA cross-country champion, was 13th in 24:00.5.

“Where you are here is not where you’re going to be at the end of the year,” Hoare said, referring to the 2023 track season. “But it’s nice to be part of everyone’s journey from start to finish.”

Results were promising for those three aforementioned milers, all coming off PBs at 1,500 meters:

Hoare, 25, of Australia, was a Commonwealth Games gold medalist (3:30.12); Nuguse, 23, a U.S. Olympian, missed NCAAs with injury but ran 3:33.26 in September; Romo, 23, of Spain, was a European Championships bronze medalist and fourth at worlds in an all-dates collegiate record of 3:30.20.

“The altitude and this extra volume that we’ve been doing at the pro level has really just helped us reach a new level in our training,” Nuguse said. “It’s definitely going to be interesting to see how it kind of continues going into indoor and outdoor.”

Contact David Woods at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.