Sylvain Rukundo won the 12km trial race to qualify for this year’s IAAF World half marathon championship set for October 12 in Rio de Janiero, Brazil.

Rukundo won the local organized trial event by clocking 38:27 while Alexis Nzeyimana and Jean Baptiste Simuceka finished second and third respectively.

Both Rukundo and Simuceka will be making their second appearance in the world event after guiding Rwanda to sixth position in the last year’s edition held in Udine, Italy while it’ll be debut for Nzeyimana

The trio will be joined by Europe based runners Gervais Hakizimana, Dieudonne Disi and their female counterpart Angelline Nyiransabimana for the two-week residential training camp which starts mid this month.

The five male athletes will vie for the four available places on the boys’ team while Nyiransabimana being the only female athlete is assured an automatic place on the Rwanda team. 

In a related development, Disi failed to redeem himself in the Memorial Van Damme grand prix held in Brussels, Belgium on Friday night.

In 10,000m event, Disi who finished 19th in the same event at last month’s Beijing Olympic Games finished 13th position after clocking 28:00:8.

Sileshi Sihine (Ethiopia) won the race in a time of 27:06:97. Kenyan pair of Moses Masai and Bernard Kiprop finished in second and third positions while Uganda’s Boniface Kiprop finished in sixth.

Ends