World 10,000m champion and world junior record holder Linet Masai and world 10km record holder Micah Kogo will make their highly anticipated debuts over the 21km distance at Zayed Half-Marathon in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.

However, Olympic marathon champion Sammy Wanjiru will miss out on the race after he withdrew to enable him prepare for the London Marathon due in April.

Wanjiru is also the world half marathon record holder, with a time of 58 minutes 33 seconds he set in 2007. Eritrea’s world half-marathon champion Zersenay Tadese will head the men’s line-up.

Masai however faces her strongest challenge in world half-marathon record holder Lornah Kiplagat, on a return to active competition after a career-threatening knee injury that kept her out for almost a year.

Kiplagat’s personal best time of 1:06:25 at the World Road Running Championships in Udine, Italy, is the world record.