The terrain on which the World Cross Country Championships will be decided over the next two days, dominated discussion on the eve of Belfast's biggest sporting presentation.

Unlike the parkland courses used almost exclusively for this championship in modern years, Barnett Demesne, off the Upper Malone Road, is a throwback to another era when strength and balance complemented speed, in determining cross country champions.

With two stiff uphill climbs and stretches of firm and soggy ground on different parts of the circuit, it offers an authentic test for those aspiring to success in one of sport's more demanding disciplines. And the perception is that it will change the equation in the men's championships which have been the exclusive preserve of African runners for much of the last 20 years.

It's scarcely the type of ground to induce excesses of enthusiasm from the all conquering Kenyan team but Paul Tergat will not offer it as an excuse if he fails to win for a fifth consecutive year.

"The course is tough, especially the extra loop for the 12 kilometres race," he said. "But it's a tough course for everybody and it doesn't particularly favour the Europeans."

Predictably, Jon Brown, the main British hope, saw in the unusual course, a cause for encouragement. "In recent times, world cross country courses have been suited to track type runners which favoured non-European runners," he said.

"Cross country is meant to be different to track racing. It demands that athletes be able to run on a variety of surfaces, to surmount obstacles in a way that is totally different to anything on the track.

"This course makes that difference and because it's going to get worse over the next couple of days, I think you will find more Europeans than usual, in the top 30."

That's a theory which had a lot of support in Belfast yesterday but whether it translates into significant change in the top eight, remains to be seen.

Last year in Marrakech, Kenya supplied six of the first seven across the line and nobody is betting against a repeat of that performance here.

Although Tergat had his problems in the early part of the season, he is now finely tuned once more after attending a tree-week training camp in his home country. And as ever, he will be looking warily over his shoulder, for the team-mates who present the biggest threat to his hopes of another victory.

Paul Koech, the silver medallist at Marrakech, beat Tergat in the Kenyan trials four weeks ago to confirm the form which enables him to lead the World Cross Country points table.

Hendrik Ramaala, the South African who ran well in Belfast earlier this season, is likely to be in contention for much of the 12,000 metre journey but in the unlikely event of the title ending up in non-Kenyan hands, Million Wolke of Ethiopia, who won the junior championship a year ago, could be the one to profit.

Nouredinne Morceli, the Algerian who defined the boundaries of middle distance running for so long, is expected to win the men's short course championship as the prelude to another eventful season in track competition.

Sadly, Sonia O'Sullivan's role in Belfast will be that of spectator and with Catherina McKiernan also ruled out, the women's long course championship, which once promised to be an absorbing duel between Ireland's leading athletes, has lost much of its local appeal.

It should not obscure, however, the talent left in a race which in addition to Paula Radcliffe, includes the top Africans, Gete Wami (Ethiopia), Zahra Quaziz (Morocco) and Switzerland's Anita Weyermann.

Wami, an Olympic bronze medallist in the 10,000 metres in the Atlanta Games, won this title in Cape Town three years ago and currently leads in the women's World Cross Country series.

At her best, Quaziz would race her all the way to the line but yesterday, she was complaining of pain which could necessitate her withdrawal. "With Sonia O'Sullivan missing, this is a good chance for me but I will not make a decision on running until shortly before the race," she said.

British support and much of the Irish, too, will be for Radcliffe, a fine athlete who has never reaped the full rewards of her talent. Second twice she has just returned from a course of altitude training which, she hopes, will at last help her to corner the title she has prized for so long.

With O'Sullivan and McKiernan missing, the Irish challenge may for once, be low key. Paulo Doglio, an Italian who qualifies for Ireland because of his ancestry, could run well in the men's short course race and the hope is that John Ferrin and Dermot Donnelly will grow tall on local support in the long course championship which forms the centrepiece of today's programme.