By Mutwiri Mutuota and IAAF

Ethiopia is gearing for Amman, Jordan, with grim realisation that the trio, which constitutes its most potent distance running assault weapons, will not line up for battle.

On Tuesday, reports from Addis Ababa confirmed that three-time senior women champion, Tirunesh Dibaba and husband Sileshi Sihine, were out of the March 28 World Cross due to injury and training fatigue.

Ethiopians are also sweating on the prospects of their team going to their first World Cross in nine years without six-time senior men champion, Kenenisa Bekele.

“It is now pretty certain that a slow recovery from a leg injury will rule out reigning men’s champion,” the IAAF website reported on Tuesday.

Quite to the contrary, the news was not received by three cheers or champagne and caviar celebration at the Kenyan camp training in Embu.

“It’s sad for the event that the three will not be there. Our runners motivate themselves to face them because they bring out the best,” head coach, Julius Kirwa, told FeverPitch yesterday.

“Even without the three, Ethiopia will still field strong athletes and we are training hard to better them as well as all other countries that will be there,” the coach noted.

“We are not going to allow our runners to relent in their mission following the news. In fact, their absence, if true, will make the competition more open and will lift other nations and we have to be ready,” Kirwa disclosed.

The Ethiopian Athletics Federation (EAF) named its provisional squad of 24 for the Amman World Cross last Saturday where Bekele, Tirunesh and Sihine were missing.