Results
BYDGOSZCZ, Poland – University of Portland freshman Trevor Dunbar was the top USA finisher and placed 29th overall at the IAAF World Cross Country Junior Championships on Sunday, March 28th. Among a field of 121 athletes from 30 different countries, Dunbar finished second among all competitors from the Western Hemisphere.
Kenyan Caleb Mwangangi Ndiku won the event with a time of 22:07 and the next three finishers also hailed from Kenya. Dunbar, who earned the right to represent his country by winning the USA Junior Cross Country Championships in Spokane, Wash. on March 13th, finished the 8,000-meter course in a time of 23:36.
“Trevor was the second non-African born runner in the field, just to put 29th in perspective,” said Portland head coach Rob Conner. “He ran a great race and we are very proud of him. Spectacular!”
The event welcomes a total of 499 runners (men/women and junior/senior) from 56 nations. The American junior squad ran the top six finishers from the USA Championships. To compete in the junior race a runner must be older than 16 and not turn 20 years old during the 2010 calendar year.
Dunbar was the fastest of six American runners on Team USA, which placed eighth as a team. Andrew Colley, a freshman at North Carolina State University, placed 42nd at 24:10, and high school senior Walter Schafer, from Centennial, Colo., finished 44th in 24:17. Washington State University freshman Andrew Kimpel closed out Team USA's four scorers in 54th at 24:37.
“I felt really good at the beginning,” Dunbar said in a race report from the USATF. “There were a lot of good people in front of me and that was motivation for me to catch them. There are a lot of good people here and if you want to be with them, you've got to train hard, and get used to the hard pace.”
Dunbar is redshirting the 2010 indoor track and field season for the Portland Pilots team so that he could train for the USA and World Championships. The Kodiak, Alaska native was an integral part of Portland’s 13th-place finish at the NCAA cross country championships on Nov. 23, 2009.
