Entoto Athletes
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Olympic Gold Medalist Haile Gebrselassie has set 25 world records.
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Derartu Tulu was the first African woman to win an Olympic gold medal. Photo by: Victor Sailer
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Gezahegne Abera is the first man in history to hold both the Olympic and World Championship marathon titles at the same time. Photo by: Victor Sailer
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Olympic 5000m champion Meseret Defar has set world records in four different events. Photo by: Victor Sailer
Haile Gebrselassie
Considered by many to be one of, if not the greatest distance runner ever, Haile Gebrselassie is that rare athlete who has transcended his sport. Though small in stature at 5’3” tall, Haile’s prodigious talent has produced two Olympic and nine world championship gold medals as well as an astonishing 25 (and counting) world records. But the combination of Haile’s talent, charm and beaming smile, has endowed him with a larger-than-life aura, which he has used to better the lives of all Ethiopians.
As a child growing up on a farm in Ethiopia, Haile used to run ten kilometers back and forth to school every morning. This led to a distinctive running posture, his left arm crooked as if still holding his schoolbooks. After his thrilling 1996 Olympic 10,000 meter win against long-time rival Paul Tergat of Kenya, Disney Films was so moved that it made a movie of Haile’s life called “Endurance” which traced his path toward Olympic glory.
Today, Haile continues his remarkable athletic career. He broke the world half-marathon record in Scottsdale, Arizona in January 2006 and the marathon record in Berlin, Germany in September 2007. From his top floor office in the eight-story Alem Building he built with his track earnings and named after his wife, Haile has extended his influence into business and social arenas back home. In 2001, he helped create The Great Ethiopian Run, the largest mass-participation road race in the country. He has also lent his name and donated often to United Nations causes. There are many who believe that a future in politics awaits this charismatic man fondly nicknamed “The Emperor.”
Derartu Tulu
Some athletes are born to become part of history. One such athlete was the world’s greatest marathoner and Africa’s first Olympic champion, Ethiopian Abebe Bikila. Bikila won back-to-back gold in the Rome and Tokyo Olympics in the early sixties. Today, the female counterpart to the great Bikila still strides amongst us, Derartu Tulu. Derartu was born during the communist regime that ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991, a time in which the government downplayed the importance of athletics. She came of age athletically just as her country was throwing off the yoke of communist rule and re-dedicating itself to its historic role as a world leader in distance running. During the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, Derartu wrote a new chapter in Olympic history as she found herself in a last lap battle with South Africa’s Elena Meyer for the 10,000 meter gold medal.
Elena Meyer was among the first contingent of South Africans allowed back into Olympic competition after the overthrow of apartheid. So when Derartu sprinted to the lead in the final stretch to win the gold, both she and Elena represented something historical - Derartu as Africa’s first female to earn Olympic gold and Elena as South Africa’s first Olympic medalist. The sight of the two diminutive athletes - one black, one white - circling the Olympic track during their lap of honor, each carrying her nation’s flag on high, became a rallying cry for young women throughout the world. Especially so in Ethiopia, where Derartu’s natural elegance and fierce pride engineered a major shift in Ethiopian society as her victory ushered in a new era in women’s distance running.
In 2000, Derartu won her second Olympic 10,000 meter title in Sydney. She now competes in the marathon even as a new generation of women has taken on the mantel as world-beaters on the track. If Haile is the Emperor of Ethiopian distance running, then Derartu is most assuredly the queen.
Gezahegne Abera
There is no event more revered in Ethiopia than the marathon. For it was via the marathon that Ethiopia first announced itself to the world as an athletic power. With Abebe Bikila winning two Olympic gold in 1960 and 1964, followed by Mamo Wolde in Mexico City in 1968, Ethiopians came to consider the marathon as their special event. So when Gezahegne Abera took the top step on the podium at the Olympic Marathon in Seoul 2000, the Ethiopian nation was once again in their rightful position. But Gezahegne wasn’t satisfied with just repeating history. With his powerful last kilometer kick he next took World Championship gold in the marathon in Edmonton, Canada in 2001, becoming the first man in history to hold both the Olympic and World Championship titles at the same time.
Married to world-class marathoner Elfenesh Alemu, Gezahegne’s personality is one of the most infectious in the distance running world. In 2003, Gezahegne and Elfenesh were married in the national stadium in Addis Ababa, the only venue capable of accommodating their 25,000 guests and friends. The train on Elfenesh’s gown stretched 600 feet, the longest such wedding gown in history.
Though slowed in recent years by chronic Achilles tendon injuries, Gezahegne remains one of the most charismatic and sought after athletes of his generation, and a worthy inheritor of the Abebe Bikila and Mamo Wolde legacy.
Meseret Defar
At just 23 years of age, Meseret has already established a historic career. The reigning Olympic 5000 meter champion from Athens 2004 has gone on a world record binge over the last two years. Last year in New York City she broke the world record for 5000 meters, and then slashed that mark by almost eight seconds to finish in 14:16.63 at the Exxon Mobil Bislett Games in Oslo, Norway. Meseret also holds the world 5K road record of 14:46 set at the 2006 Carlsbad 5000 in California.
Meseret lives in Addis Ababa with her husband Teodros Hailu, a former soccer player. Her success has enabled her to extend her influence beyond running. In 2004, she was appointed the UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador for Ethiopia. Begun in 1969 and renamed in 1987, the United Nations Population Fund is the world's largest international source of funding for population and reproductive health programs.
On a personal level, Meseret has proven to be more than just a good role model. She and husband, Teodros, adopted a young girl after her birth mother, a cousin of Meseret’s, left her in the couple’s care.