Haile
follows the call of the marathon, while
thousands follow Haile
Sabrina Yohannes
for the IAAF
29 November 2001 - With another road
race successfully under his belt, track
master Haile Gebrselassie’s next step in
his build-up to the London marathon will
be on yet another surface. “I will be
running cross country to help in my
preparation for the marathon,” said
Gebrselassie, who won the inaugural
Great Ethiopian Run 10K in Addis Ababa
Sunday.
The double Olympic 10,000-metre champion has not had the same success in cross country, but plans to run one race, in Europe. He does not plan to enter the Dublin world cross championships. “That’s too close to the marathon,” he said.
“Beginning in September, it’s the longer distances that I have been gearing all my training towards – the marathon and the half-marathon,” he said. After winning the October world half-marathon championships in his first attempt, Gebrselassie ran the Seven Hills 15K in the Netherlands where, despite losing the race to defending champion Felix Limo of Kenya, the Ethiopian ran under the world best at the time. “That was what I wanted,” said Gebrselassie. “It will help me for the marathon. It tells me that if I have that kind of speed, I will run the marathon very well.”
Gebrselassie’s first and only marathon to date was in Addis Ababa when, as a novice runner and a teenager, he placed 99th, having taken up the sport after Tekeye, his older brother. Tekeye, meanwhile, placed second in that race.
Sunday’s Great Ethiopian Run also saw more than one Gebrselassie run the streets of Addis Ababa behind the man who has made the family name famous worldwide. Despite a few problems controlling a crowd of some 10,000 inexperienced runners at the start and finish, the race, which Gebrselassie helped organize and promote, was a success not only as an elite competition, but as a mass participation event and on a scale never before seen in Ethiopia, and the Gebrselassie clan embraced that aspect whole-heartedly.
“The whole family said to me, ‘Why are you the only one running?’ ” said Gebrselassie, who said he encouraged them all to enter the race. There was talk of his wife, Alem, participating, but as she is expecting the couple’s third child, she did not run. But several others did: Gebrselassie’s oldest brother Assefa, with whom he first lived in Addis Ababa when he came from the Arssi region to run; his oldest sister Shewaness, who became the matriarch of the family when the 10 children’s mother died; and his younger brother Belay, an aspiring runner.
“Assefa ran about 39, 37 minutes, something like that,” said Gebrselassie, of the first finisher of the group. “It was better than I expected.”
The immediate family was also joined by two extended family members:
Gebrselassie’s father-in-law and, in a case of life imitating art, Yonas Zergaw, the nephew who portrayed the young Haile in “Endurance,” the film about the champion’s life. All finished the race. “Of course!” laughed Gebrselassie, who grew up covering the same distance twice daily as a schoolboy in Arssi. “How can they not finish 10 kilometres?”
Shewaness, a short, plump woman referred to affectionately as Shewaye by the family, bounded up the steps to the stage where her brother stood after the race and enveloped him in a bear hug. “I am so happy I ran with my brother, the hero,” she said, after finishing in what she estimated was a little over 40 minutes.
The extended family’s age range spanned four full decades, courtesy of Yonas Zergaw’s 16 years and the father-in-law’s 56. The race’s age distribution was much wider, starting at 14, the minimum allowed age, and going up to 77. “The age profile was skewed compared to what we are used to,” said race organizer Nova International’s John Caine. While the peak ages for men and women at their Great North Run event in the UK is typically in the 30’s, the Addis Ababa race was heavily dominated by younger runners, the peak male and female ages being 18 and 16.
Although Ethiopian and expatriate runners of all ages and backgrounds took part in the “fun run,” a vast number of the young participants actually hoped to one day become runners like Gebrselassie. One such entrant was Mehretu Desta, 18, who was at the race site two days before the event when Gebrselassie arrived for a photo shoot. A group of boys stood and watched from a respectful distance until the shoot was over, and then surrounded their hero seeking autographs.
“He is amazing and a wonderful son of Ethiopia,” said the new jeans-clad Desta, a high school graduate who had applied at the local technical college and was expecting to hear back any day. He said he had run the course four times in preparation, timing himself in just under 39 minutes in his best try. “I want to be an engineer, and also a runner,” said Desta, who had seen “Endurance” and been moved by Gebrselassie’s life.
Desta found the late morning heat and the crowds at the start a little difficult on race day. “It took me about 40 minutes,” he said, but he delighted in the experience of running with Gebrselassie. “I feel great joy,” said Desta. “It’s a precious opportunity.”
