Former breakfast television pancake maker Benita Johnson became the first Australian to win a world cross country medal when she was a shock winner of the women's long race in Brussels.

The 24-year-old - who said on Friday that Australia was a great place for a holiday but not for athletics - finished well clear of Ethiopian duo Ejagayou Dibaba and last year's champion Werknesh Kidane to become the first non-Ethiopian medallist of the championships.

Earlier the Ethiopians had swept the medals in both the junior women's race and the men's short race where Kenenisa Bekele won his third successive crown in the event and set himself up for a double for the third consecutive year when he runs the long race on Sunday.

While the Ethiopians enjoyed a red letter day it was a miserable day for their great rivals the Kenyans as the men failed to honour their promise of making Bekele feel like he had been through a war and the country failed to lift a medal.

Johnson was delighted at breaking the Ethiopian monopoly and finally gaining a medal in an event she had finished fourth, fifth and sixth in previously.

"I wanted the crowd to hear a different anthem to the Ethiopian one as they had heard it enough," she said.

"I wanted the organisers to go scrabbling through the tape box to find an Australian one.

"It is extraordinary we have never won a medal before and it's good to start with it as a gold," she added.

Johnson, a former top junior field hockey player, had stuck in with the leading group from the off and refused to be shrugged off as Kidane and Dibaba - sister of the world 5000m champion Tirunesh - turned on the pace from the halfway mark.

The leading group was down to four by the bell with Kenyan Alice Timbili hanging on but once Johnson - whose coach Nick Bideau coached Sonia O'Sullivan to two world cross country titles in Morocco in 1998 - took the lead early on the final lap she faded away.

Brought to you by AAP © 2024 AAP