Athletics: Bekele keeps the run going with romp in the snow

There had not been time to alter the signs greeting spectators at Newcastle's Exhibition Park on Saturday – "International Athletics featuring Paula Radcliffe.''

Britain's marathon world record holder and European and Commonwealth champion, who dropped out of the Great North Cross-Country with flu at two day's notice, was not just top of the bill. She was the bill.

But as the snow fell thickly on an event lacking its snow queen, there was the opportunity to laud another commanding figure who looks ready to rule cross-country, and perhaps the track for a good many years to come.

In finishing a home straight clear of a 9.4km field that included two outstanding Kenyans – the Commonwealth 5,000 metres champion Sammy Kipketer and the world half-marathon champion Paul Kosgei – Kenenisa Bekele extended his run of cross-country victories to 10.

Since losing to his illustrious Ethiopian compatriot Haile Gebrselassie in December 2001, this 20-year-old from the Arsi region that produced Gebrselassie and the double Olympic 10,000m champion Derartu Tulu, has established himself as one of the most exciting prospects in world athletics.

Shortly after winning both versions of the World Cross-Country title in Dublin last March, Bekele was identified by Gebrselassie as the young man capable of annexing his world records at 5,000 and 10,000m.

The quietly spoken Barley farmer's son, known informally as Kenny, seemed oblivious to the slippery conditions as he established a telling lead by the half-way point and finished as if he was on a training run.

Cornered by the press afterwards, his long lashes offering a fleeting resemblance to Bambi, he said he had found the race easy and had plenty of energy left at the finish.

He plans to run one more race, in Seville, before defending one of his World-Cross titles in Lauzanne in March. Thereafter Bekele plans to enjoy the track season he expected last summer before an Achilles tendon injury forced him out of action for four months.

Not the least virtue of his performance in Newcastle was the fact that he had only returned to running two months earlier.

Bekele is still undecided whether he should contest the 5,000 or 10,000m at the World Championships in Paris this summer, but should he chose the latter distance it could see him running against the man who has been the acknowledged master of the event for the last decade.

In Radcliffe's absence, the women's 6.8km race went as expected, to the runner who took silver behind her in last year's Commonwealth Games 5,000m, Edith Masai. The Kenyan pulled clear of a spirited Irish challenge presented by 40-year-old Ann Keanan-Buckley, eventually fourth, and Maria McCambridge with a lap remaining and finished two seconds clear of fellow countrywoman Worknesh Kidane.

It was left to the men's 4km race to produce the only upset of the day as 34-year-old Rob Whalley won the title he had missed by one place a decade earlier.

Whalley, a leisure duty manager at the University of Bath, intends to run the short course version of the World Cross-Country, an event where he has a best placing of 37th, achieved in 1998.

The City of Stoke runner had a less than ideal preparation for the race when his flight from Bristol airport the previous day was aborted twice before getting underway. "It was frightening," he said.

But having finished safely clear of a field that included the former European Indoor 3,000m champion, John Mayock, and reigning Commonwealth 1,500m champion, Michael East – who fell flat on his face in the mud at the start – Whalley enlarged upon the problem that has hampered his athletics career: asthma. "A couple of my family members also suffer from it, so there must be something genetic about it," he said. "But over the years I've suffered panic attacks with it. It is always worst in the summer. Between May and September I'm bloody useless. It's a bit of a joke really.

"It was becoming a phobia for me. I was phobic towards running on the bloody track. But since last May I've been having regular hypnotherapy sessions from a woman in my training group who works for the local health authority.

"I needed to get rid of a lot of things that were clogging my mind up. I know now that if I feel an attack coming on it does not have to take me over. I can control it. It's made me feel a lot more confidant about my running."

On Saturday's evidence, Whalley is right. A bigger test awaits him after the cross-country season.