Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia bids farewell to the Athens crowd (© Getty Images)
Ethiopian distance star Haile Gebrselassie, the former quadruple World and double Olympic 10,000m champion underwent an operation on his left Achilles on Thursday 9 September in Helsinki, Finland.
A team of very experienced sports orthopaedic surgeons consisting of Mr. Sakari Orava, Mr. Eero Hyvärinen and Chief physician of the Finnish Olympic Committee Mr. Aki Hintsa confirmed that the operation was successful.
The injury occurred in training some 5 weeks prior to the Athens Olympic Games and delayed the preparations for Gebrselassie substantially. Although not in his best shape, Gebrselassie participated at the Olympic 10,000m race and managed to finish 5th. It was his last track race ever at a major international championship.
The Finnish medical team confirmed that the operation was successful and expect Gebrselassie to get back to training in about 3 months. In the future, Gebrselassie will concentrate on road racing and marathon running. His ultimate goals in his running career are to break the World record at the Half Marathon and Marathon distances and to win the 2008 Olympic Marathon in Beijing.
