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Farah makes cross country comeback

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The men of Team Europe will be put to the test at the Great Edinburgh Cross Country next month after it was announced on Thursday that Mo Farah will be leading the British challenge.

Farah, the double Olympic and five-times world and European champion, will be running over cross country for the first time in five years.

'It will be an important year for me in 2016 and I am looking forward to returning to the Great Edinburgh Cross Country to kick off my season,' said Farah.

'For many years cross country was a key building block for the year ahead and I am pleased to add it to my schedule for the first time since I ran in Edinburgh back in 2011.'

Holyrood Park is a picturesque way for Farah to start 2016 where he will be looking for more glory at the Olympic Games.

In 2012, one of the key events leading up to the Olympics in London was his 5000m triumph at the European Athletics Championships in Helsinki and he might take that route again with the Europeans in Amsterdam in July.

Farah won gold at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships back in 2006 and he is joined in the British team in Edinburgh by Jonathan Davies, the newly crowned European under-23 champion.

It will prove some race over 8km with the form that Türkiye’s Ali Kaya showed in Hyères last Sunday when he won the senior title.

And it will not be the only time that Farah and Kaya clash next year.

When Farah regained the European 10,000m crown in Zurich in 2014, Kaya was third and the Turk will hope to do aswell, if not better, when he faces him again on the track this year.

Kaya has a brilliant front-running style, which on the tricky cross-country surfaces can work well if an athlete establishes a lead - and his meeting with Farah will be a fascinating occasion.

Kate Avery and Harriet Knowles-Jones, silver-medallists from the senior and junior races respectively on Sunday, will look to keep up their fine winter of success in Edinburgh in this match between Britain, USA and Team Europe.

BRITISH TEAM

MEN

Senior: Andrew Butchart, Andrew Davies, Jonny Davies, Mo Farah, Richard Goodman, Dewi Griffiths, Callum Hawkins, Jonny Hay, Tom Lancashire, Ross Millington, Nick Swinburn, Jonny Taylor

Junior: Gus Cockle, William Fuller, Euan Gillham, Mahamed Mahamed, Will Richardson, Alex Yee

WOMEN

Senior: Charlotte Arter, Kate Avery, Emma Clayton, Louise Damen, Faye Fullerton, Lauren Howarth, Josephine Moultrie, Rebecca Murray, Jenny Nesbitt, Beth Potter, Gemma Steel, Elle Vernon

Junior: Niamh Brown, Bobby Clay, Heidi Davies, Morven Goodrum, Harriet Knowles-Jones, Sabrina Sinha




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