By Richard Sands | FloTrack
Cherry Creek grad Parker Wolfe and Weini Kelati won USATF cross country titles over 10K on Saturday in Portland, Ore., and will lead Team USATF to the 2026 World Athletics Cross Country Championships to be held in Tallahassee, Fla., on January 10. Ethan Strand and Gracie Morris won the 2K races and will run on the mixed relay squad at Worlds.
The first six finishers in the 10-K races earned spots on the team, while the top two men and top two women in the 2-K races qualified for the mixed relay. This will be the first time the United States has hosted the world championships since 1992, when the meet was held at Boston’s Franklin Park.
Portions of the Glendoveer Golf Course were muddy and chewed up after heavy rain in the days leading up to the meet as well as the Nike Cross Nationals (NXN) high school championships races held earlier in the day. “When I saw the mud, the hills, I said this is real cross country,” said Kelati.
In the men’s 10K, Rocky Hansen went right to the front. Two weeks after finishing second at the NCAA championships, the Wake Forest junior seemed determined to push the pace. By 3-K, he led a group of six that had separated from the field, including pre-race favorites Nico Young and Graham Blanks as well as Wesley Kiptoo, Ahmed Muhumed and Wolfe. Kiptoo, a former Kenyan, became eligible to represent the United States in October.
Hansen passed 5K in 14:27.5 to lead the pack, and he opened a slight gap by 6-K. “It was the plan to string it out and make it hurt,” Hansen told LetsRun.com. “The pros were actually in my wheelhouse now, because I’ve run four cross country races before this… The pros, a lot of them, haven’t raced it in a year-plus, so it’s a unique situation where I was the one who had the advantage.”
Kiptoo, Muhumed and Wolfe kept up the chase while Young and Blanks started to fall behind. Kiptoo slipped and lost his momentum climbing a muddy hill just before 8K and briefly lost momentum. With less than a kilometer to go it was a two-man race with Wolfe shadowing Hansen. Wolfe finally began to accelerate and quickly opened up a comfortable margin over the final half mile. He broke the tape in 29:16.4, ahead of Hansen (29:24.8), Kiptoo (29:27.7) and Muhumed (29:33.7). Young (29:41.6) passed Blanks (29:45.0) in the final stretch for fifth. Seventh-place finisher Liam Murphy (29:59.4) will be the first alternate for the team.
“I was just trying to stay in contact with him,” Wolfe said on the Runnerspace.com broadcast of the race of his pursuit of Hansen. “He was ready for this, he’s been racing all season, so I was just trying to plug away. And when we got to 800 left, I just felt like I had a little more in the tank going up those hills.”
For Wolfe, this victory offered some redemption after he finished third in the 5000 meters at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials but lacked the qualifying standard for the Summer Games. “After missing out on Paris I’ve been looking to make a team since, so this is a fun experience and I’m ready to represent USA,” said the recent North Carolina grad, who missed this year’s track and field championship season with injury.