Three-time Bix 7 men’s champion Silas Kipruto is coming back to the Quad-City Times Bix 7 in hopes of making a little more history

The three-time Bix 7 men’s champion will be joined in the 45th annual race through the streets of Davenport by a deep women’s field that includes two former champions, the second fastest female runner in the race’s history and a world record-holder in two events.

Kipruto already is among the most successful runners in the history of the race, which is scheduled this year for July 27. The 34-year-old native of Kenya not only won the Bix 7 in 2011, 2012 and 2016, but he has finished in the top five on three other occasions.

His half dozen top-five finishes equal the most ever by a male runner in the race, tying Meb Keflezighi, Bill Rodgers, John Korir and Lazarus Nyakeraka.

Kipruto is one of 17 African runners in the preliminary men’s elite field assembled by elite athlete coordinator John Tope — 13 from Kenya and two each from Eritrea and Tanzania.

Besides Kipruto, male runners to watch include Tanzania’s Gabriel Geay, who won both the Lilac Bloomsday 12k and the Bay to Breakers 12k in May; Kenya’s Edwin Mokua, a top-three finisher at both Bloomsday and Bay to Breakers; Kenya’s Leonard Barsoton, who was first in the African Cross Country championships in 2014 and second in the African Games 10,000 meters in 2015; and Emmanuel Kiprono, Kenya’s 10,000-meter champ in 2013.

posted Wednesday July 24th
by Kevin E. Schmidt