One of the most competitive races in the world:
The Ethiopian Cross Country Championships.
Debut: 1956,
Melbourne
Total Games appearances: 12
Total Medals 45
• 21 Gold
• 7 Silver
• 17 Bronze
Ethiopia at the 2012
London Olympics
Tirunesh Dibaba (10,000m and 5,000m)
• Gold and Bronze
Meseret Defar (5000m)
• Gold
Tiki Gelana (Marathon)
• Gold
Dejen Gebremeskel (5000m)
• Silver
Sofia Assefa (3000m Steeplechase)
• Bronze
Tariku Bekele (10,000m)
• Bronze
Ethiopian Running: A Legacy of Excellence
Since joining the Olympic family in Melbourne 1956, Ethiopia has established a legacy of running excellence any country would be proud to claim as its own. This past August (2012), Ethiopian runners added seven more medals to their country’s impressive Olympic haul in London. They were led by their three women gold medalists: Tiki Gelana in the women’s marathon (in Olympic record time), Tirunesh Dibaba, and Meseret Defar, who returned to the top step of the Olympic podium in the 5,000 meters, a rarified perch she had previously mounted in Athens 2004. Adding a silver medal in the men’s 5,000 meters was Dejen Gebrmeskel, while Tariku Bekele, younger brother of three-time Olympic gold medalist Keninise Bekele, earned the bronze in the men’s 10,000. Sofia Assefa took home bronze in the women’s 3,000 meter steeplechase to round out the medal winners.
The Ethiopian rise to international distance running prominence began on a summer Rome evening in 1960. A private in Emporer Haile Selassie’s Imperial Guard, Abebe Bikil ran barefoot over cobblestones to a gold medal in the marathon. At the time, he was no more than a last minute replacement runner on the 1960 squad, yet he finished in a world record time of 2:15:16. Bikila became the first sub-Saharan African to win an Olympic gold medal, and the political and sporting consequence of his win reverberate to this day. Bikila’s elegant stride announced in no uncertain terms his continent's abilities and emergence as independent and assured citizens of the world. His triumph was all the more opportune because it took place in the capital of Ethiopia's former military occupier. To limn the race with legend, Bikila broke free of his final pursuer just as he re-passed the Axum Obelisk, a towering stela that Mussolini had plundered from Ethiopia as war loot.
Four years later, this time wearing shoes, Bikila certified his place in history, becoming the first man to win two Olympic Marathon gold medals, again in world record time (2:12:11). His legend now secure, but his lifestyle and age catching up with him, Bikila was again named to the 1968 Mexico City team. A knee injury forced him from the competition after just 17 kilometers. In his stead, countryman Mamo Wolde stepped smartly onto the top step of the Olympic podium to strengthen the Ethiopian hold on the Olympic Marathon title.
Though Ethiopians like Kebede Balcha maintained a strong international presence in the 1970s and early 1980s--Balcha won the silver medal at the inaugural IAAF World Championships in Helsinki, Finland in 1983--Olympic boycotts in Montreal 1976 and Los Angeles 1984 contributed to a downturn in performance throughout this turbulent time. What’s more, with the overthrow of Emporer Haile Selassie in 1974, and the subsequent installation of a communist regime which ruled until 1991, athletics was not accentuated as a national source of pride.
A return to glory flashed in 1980 when the man known as (Miruts) Yifter “the Shifter” – a reference to his deadly finishing kick - won the distance double at the Moscow Olympic Games, while countryman Mohamed Kedir brought home the bronze in the 10,000m. Yet the 1980s were mostly a barren decade. Not until Belayneh Densimo won the Rotterdam Marathon in 1988 in a world record time of 2:06:05 did Ethiopia return to its prior glory. A year later Abebe Mekonnen became the first Ethiopian to win the prestigious Boston Marathon, even as Densimo’s marathon record would last for 10 long years.
At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Derartu Tulu won the 10,000 meters in a final lap sprint over South Africa’s Elana Meyer. In so doing Tulu became the first African woman to win an Olympic gold medal, and the first Ethiopian woman to win any medal. Meyer’s silver medal marked South Africa’s welcome back into the international family of nations after three decades of banishment due to the nation’s apartheid racial policies. The lap of honor run by the two tiny Africans, one black the other white, remains one of the iconic moments in modern Olympic history.
It was also around this time that a young runner emerged from the Arsi Province south of the capital of Addis Ababa to begin an unprecedented rule of the running world. First gaining international recognition in 1992 when he captured both the 5000m and 10,000m races at the Junior World Championships in Seoul, South Korea, Haile Gebreselassie would go on to earn two Olympic and four IAAF World Championship 10,000m gold medals, and set or break a mind-boggling 27 world records on the track and roads. With an astonishing range from 1500m (3:31.76, indoors) to the marathon where he was twice world record holder (PR: 2:03:59, Berlin 2008), the man they called “The Emperor” inspired not only a new generation of Ethiopian champions, but runners throughout the world as well. As Haile was preparing to take on the challenge of Kenya’s World Cross Country champion Paul Tergat in Atlanta’s Games in 1996, it was Derartu Tulu who was awarded the honor carrying the nation's flag during the opening ceremonies, a nod to her ground-breaking performance four years before in Barcelona.
While Tulu finished a disappointing fourth in the 10,000m in Atlanta, another talented Arsi Province newcomer showed forth in the marathon. Competing in only her fourth marathon, 23-year old Fatuma Roba buried the field in Atlanta, assuming the lead near the 11-mile mark, and building a victory margin of two minutes over defending Olympic champion Valentina Yegorova of Russia. Roba would go on to three straight Boston Marathon tiles, adding to the growing legacy of Ethiopian women runners.
One Olympic cycle later, Ethiopia would crown its third men’s Olympic Marathon champion, as Gezahegne Abera triumphed in Seoul 2000. What’s more, Abera would go on to win the 2001 IAAF World Championship Marathon in Edmonton, Canada, becoming the first and only man to hold both the Olympic and World Championship Marathon titles simultaneously.
In recent years there is little doubt that the most dominant male runner in both cross country and distance track racing has been Keninise Bekele. Taking over where Haile left off, Keninise broke both Haile’s world records for the 5000m and 10,000m. His 12:37.76 5000m from 2004 and 26:17.53 for 10,000m from 2005 still stand as world records to this day. Bekele was also, if not more adept at championship racing. In the 2004 Athens Olympics Bekele earned gold in the 10,000m, then silver in the 5000m. Four years later in Beijing, he did himself one better, double gold! And in the realm of cross country, no one in history has ever been better. Beginning in 2002 Bekele notched an unprecedented string of five straight double gold medal performances in the World Cross Country Championships. He not only won the short race one day (4Km), but then returned to take gold in the long race (12Km) the following day, all against the best runners in the world. Bekele has yet to run the marathon distance, but even if he never does, his place in the honor list of greatest runners ever is secure.
With today’s champions building on the legacy of their elders, Ethiopia has shown once again why for over half a century it, along with its East African neighbor Kenya, has come to define excellence in long distance running. Perhaps, in part, it is because Ethiopia is where man first emerged onto the plains of Africa to begin his transmigration of the planet. With that as their initial legacy, it’s no surprise that travel on foot is still best done where it first began. The legacy continues in October 2013 with the introduction of the Haile Gebrselassie Marathon.