Edwin
Soi and Lornah Kiplagat Top RunningTimes 2007 Road Racer Rankings By David Monti (c) 2007, Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved December 11, 2007 (posted December 18, 2007)
Edwin
Soi of Kenya and Lornah Kiplagat of the Netherlands were given the #1
road racer rankings for 2007 by the editors of Running Times magazine.
Assisted
by statistician Ken Young of the Association of Road Racing
Statisticians, the magazine compiled their rankings for the period Oct.
15, 2006, to Oct. 14, 2007, based on head-to-head competition between
the world's top-20 runners.
Soi, 21, got the top ranking over
compatriot, Micah Kogo. In an ironic twist, neither athlete ran in
many road races during the ranking period. Soi failed to finish the
Corsa Internazionale di San Silvestro "Boclassic" in Bolzano, Italy, in
2006, but won the Giro Media Blenio in Dongio 10-K, Switzerland (over
Kogo); the Corrida de l'Est Républicain 8.8-K in Heillecourt, France;
and the 10-K du Conseil Général in Marseille, France, last spring. Soi
focused on the track after that (track performances didn't count in the
rankings).
Kiplagat, 33, was propelled to the top of the women's
rankings over Ethiopia's Berhane Adere based largely on her victories
over top fields at the World's Best 10-K (San Juan, Puerto Rico), NYRR
Mini 10-K (New York, USA), and the IAAF World Road Running
Championships (Udine, Italy). She was also fifth at the Flora London
Marathon.
During the rankings period, the editors chose the
Corrida de l'Est Républicain 8.8-K and the Flora London Marathon as the
most competitive road races in the world for men and women,
respectively.
The complete rankings are published in the
January/February 2008 issue of Running Times, and are available
on-line here.