Following
Gebrselassie pays dividends for Jifar
Sabrina Yohannes for the
IAAF
13 November
2001 - Tesfaye Jifar holds the Ethiopian
national marathon record, but had never
won an international race until his
victory in the 4 November New York City
Marathon, just weeks after finishing
behind Haile Gebrselassie at the Bristol
world half-marathon championships. The
Bristol experience and the training
leading up to it may have made all the
difference in New York, and promises
more close competition between the two
runners, who will race again in the UK
when London’s star-studded marathon
serves as Gebrselassie’s international
debut.
“When someone better than you works with you, even if you’re doing the same training, your morale is higher,” said Jifar, who upgraded his two previous world half-marathon bronze medals to a silver in Bristol and was greatly encouraged by his 1:00:04 finish one second behind his victorious compatriot. “I think Haile has helped him a lot,” Michel van Sluijs, who works for both athletes’ manager Jos Hermens, said, adding of the runners’ training sessions, which include Olympic bronze-medallist Tesfaye Tola and a couple of others, “They motivate each other, and they train really hard.”
Some of the two-time Olympic champion Gebrselassie’s legendary drive may also have rubbed off on Jifar. “We were like this,” Jifar, depicting the Bristol finish by holding up his index and middle fingers one in front of the other but with little space between them, said to his brother Terefe the day after the New York marathon as they rode in a limousine to the taping of the David Letterman TV show, on which the new champion made an appearance. Terefe Jifar, who drove down from Boston where he lives to watch his brother race and then take him back to Boston for a visit, then asked Tesfaye if he had given in to Gebrselassie in the Bristol race.
“No,” replied Tesfaye, his surprise at the question showing in his voice. “There’s no such thing.” To illustrate the competitiveness in a race, he drew an analogy involving the other athlete in his family, their younger brother Habte, thrice a top-ten finisher at the world championships 10,000 metres. “If Habte and I were in a race, and Habte fell, I would say words of reassurance, but would I stop to help him?” he asked rhetorically. “No.
"After the race was over, I would go to him and ask, ‘Habte, what was it that happened to you?’ ”
One of Ethiopia’s fastest 10,000-metre runners behind Gebrselassie, Habte Jifar was the original inspiration for Tesfaye’s running career. The third of seven brothers (and one sister) born to farmers in the Lencha area near the central Ethiopian highland town of Ambo, Tesfaye Jifar never thought of running until he went to Addis Ababa over six years ago to watch Habte race. He felt compelled to give it a try and started training with Habte in the city. “I followed him, but at a distance,” said Tesfaye of the first days. “At the beginning I had energy, but I tired quickly.”
As he got the hang of it, however, he improved, and began competing, mostly cross-country, the following year, but the first showings good enough for invitations to races abroad didn’t come until 1998. That year and the next, runner-up positions in races in Ethiopia earned him spots in international races that established his presence in his two signature distances. He placed second in his first marathon, in the town of Bahr Dar in 1998, and was sent to the Hague marathon in the Netherlands, where he ran 2:22:13 to place seventh. Second place in the 1999 world half-marathon championships trials put him on that team and in position for his first world medal, a bronze, earned in 1:01:51.
“When you knock, and a door opens, you go in,” said Jifar of his subsequent focus on the two distances. It was also in 1999 that he broke the 2:06:50 long-standing Ethiopian national (and former world) marathon record by one second in Amsterdam, but illness kept him off the 2000 Olympic team.
Jifar said that despite the September 11 attacks, he never contemplated skipping his first New York marathon, but that his family and particularly his wife, expressed concern. “It’s my work, I have to go,” he said he told her. Once in New York, Jifar sensed the great significance Americans saw in the event, and voiced thanks more than once to police and others who provided security and support. His audience with the city’s mayor the day after provided one such forum.
With top-ten finishes in four marathons (Tokyo, London, the Edmonton world championships and New York), in addition to the Bristol half-marathon, 2001 has been Jifar’s busiest year, and he hopes to run the same ones (apart from the championship marathon), next year. “Of course, only God knows,” said the devoutly religious Orthodox Christian, “but as long as I have about three months between marathons, it’s fine.”
Not that Jifar’s year is over yet. He and Gebrselassie and a host of others will take part in the Great Ethiopian Run 10K in Addis Ababa on November 25th. Only then can Jifar sit back and enjoy the fruits of his industrious year, but his first-ever marathon win ensured he could at least sit back and enjoy his flight home from Boston. “He was going to board in economy class,” said Terefe Jifar, who took Tesfaye to his Lufthansa flight over the weekend. “But when they realized who he was, they changed his ticket and put him in first class.”
