Ethiopia’s
Sydney stars attend camp benefit and
race
Sabrina Yohannes
for the IAAF
14 December 2001 – Addis Ababa - Haile
Gebrselassie’s Sydney Olympic vest and
shorts were among the items on display
at an Addis Ababa expo which raised
funds for a high altitude training camp
and concluded with cross country races
and a special awards ceremony attended
by all of Ethiopia’s Sydney
gold-medallists.
The expo is intended to be the first of several to benefit the Sendafa camp, which is to include a gym, track, medical facilities and athlete accommodations on the outskirts of the capital, and was also a beneficiary of the November Great Ethiopian Run 10K.
World Youth Championships 1,500-metre bronze-medallist Sentayehu Ejigu took the women’s 4K race on Tuesday just as she had done on a similar run held at the start of the ten-day expo, which took place at Jan Meda, the site of the national cross country championships. The races were contested by up-and-coming athletes, with Ejigu’s Banks club fielding the more experienced athletes and taking both the men’s and women’s races.
Ejigu tucked into the tail end of the lead pack of women to shield herself from the wind until the last of two laps of a race for which world 4K champion Gete Wami served as a celebrity starter. “She will be a threat,” predicted former world junior champion Workinesh Kidane of Ejigu’s expected performance at the national championships.
A similar race strategy took Gebregziabher Gebremariam, who ran barefoot in his first ever cross country race, to an easy victory in the men’s 8K, for which he received a hug and was called a “lion” by Kidane, who is also in the same club, and was one of many stars on hand on the last day of the expo.
The expo included an exhibit of medals and trophies from Ethiopia’s forty-plus years of international athletics successes. Wami’s framed Sydney outfit joined Gebrselassie’s, as well as Hailu Mekonnen’s blue and white shorts and vest in which he set the world indoor two-mile record in Birmingham. A trophy with a faded inscription but labeled as being Abebe Bikila’s was one of the oldest items, while Abebe Mekonnen’s prolific career provided two rows of cups and medals and pictures of him wearing the winner’s wreath at the 1989 Boston marathon.
Officials at the gate estimated up to 10,000 people (who paid the small admission fee) had attended the expo since it began, not counting the athletes and other participants who also visited the exhibits. Earlier during the expo, a continuous showing of videos of races had drawn small crowds of spectators, and on the final day, former world marathon record-holder Belayneh Dinsamo was on hand, answering questions from viewers about the shoes and official certificate from his record run and the pictures of him crossing the line at the 1988 Rotterdam marathon under a clock displaying 2:06:50. “The camp will make an important contribution,” he said. “It’s in support of it that we brought our trophies.”
Ethiopian athletes have been preparing for major international championships by training either at the national stadium in the heart of the city or trails further out but gathering in temporary “camps” set up at hotels on the outskirts of town. “But there are other guests, and there is often live music on Saturdays and Sundays,” said head national track coach Wolde-Meskel Kostre, pointing out one of the benefits of a dedicated athletics camp in addition to the planned on-site sport facilities and the proximity to the high-altitude running trails at Sendafa, to which athletes currently drive for training.
The expo closed with awards being given to the cross country winners, as well as to winners of other competitions held during the expo including handball, cycling and equestrian sports. A special set of presentations were then made by a representative of the women’s affairs department of the prime minister’s office to Ethiopia’s Atlanta or Sydney Olympic champions Gebrselassie, Derartu Tulu (who also accepted the award for the absent Fatuma Roba), Gezahegne Abera and Million Wolde; and triple Olympic medallist Wami.
Gebrselassie was the first recipient and, to the sounds of cheers and applause from the crowd, he unveiled the wrapped and framed gift, the handiwork of women’s groups, to reveal a somewhat reasonable likeness of the double Olympic champion on the track in Sydney. Some of the other depictions, however, were not as accurate, as the watching crowd’s reaction revealed, and the presenter herself felt moved to point out that the gifts were tokens of appreciation and perhaps not perfect representations.
“Mine and Derartu’s are not bad,” Gebrselassie joked good-naturedly later, laughing as Sydney 5000-metre champion Wolde’s portrait was mentioned. The women had taken care to depict Wolde’s slender moustache, but otherwise, his boyish good looks didn’t make it onto canvas.
World and Olympic 10,000-metre women’s champion Derartu Tulu then requested a chance to thank the presenters and took the microphone. “These women – our sisters – felt great pleasure in making these presentations, and we feel great pleasure in receiving them,” she said, going on to praise the efforts towards building the training camp and expressing her hope that future efforts would be even more successful and benefit Ethiopia’s runners. “Now we number in the tens,” she concluded. “In the future, we will hopefully number in the hundreds.”
