Kenenisa Bekele at the Weltklasse Zürich,
ÅF Golden League press conference on
Thu 28 Aug 2008 [Photo:Chris Turner]
(IAAF) Zürich, Switzerland – In Beijing last week, Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele achieved a feat that even his great compatriot Haile Gebrselassie was unable to match in his illustrious track career. Joining Hannes Kolehmainen (FIN), Emil Zatopek (CZE), Vladimir Kuts (URS), Lasse Viren (FIN) and Miruts Yifter (ETH), Bekele is now one of only six men to win the 5000m and 10,000m double at the Olympic Games since those metric distances were introduced to the Olympic programme in 1912.
But Bekele’s historic achievement in China, as that of his female compatriot Tirunesh Dibaba over the same distances which was unique in women’s Olympic distance running history, was largely overlooked by the world because of one man, Jamaican Usain Bolt, whose phenomenal sprint successes transcended Athletics to make him the overall star of Beijing 2008, along with swimmer Michael Phelps.
Bekele, the World record holder for 5000 and 10,000m, was at a press conference in Zürich this afternoon ahead of tomorrow night’s Weltklasse Zürich,ÅF Golden League meeting (Fri 29) where he’ll run the 5000m. Was he upset that the 22-year-old Jamaican had upstaged the rest of the athletics programme which had produced so many other outstanding results including his own?
“No, I’m not upset (that Bolt’s success took all the headlines).”
“We cannot compare Bolt with myself. Sprinting and distance running, it is not possible to compare.”
“Bolt is very strong, very special,” said Bekele. “To break two World records (three with the sprint relay) in an Olympic Games is very special.”
The phrase ‘very special’ was constantly on Bekele’s lips this afternoon, and is how he also summed up his own Olympic double. The magnitude of his successes left him searching for an adequate description, and eventually to concede – “there are no words to describe how I feel…what can I say, its so very special for me.”
A very famous place to race
After a total of three races and Olympic records in both the 5000m (12:57.82) and 10,000m (27:01.17) finals, Bekele could be excused for wanting to take a holiday before competing again.
It’s been a busy few days of travel since his 5000m victory on Saturday (23). With the rest of the Ethiopian team Bekele has already made the trip back home to receive the expected rapturous welcome in the capital Addis Ababa.
“People at home expect success, they are waiting to celebrate after each Games. Yes, there were a million or more on the streets to welcome us, and the Prime Minister and President were there to greet us.”
Zürich Meeting Director Patrick Magyar revealed today that it took a great effort to persuade the Ethiopian Federation to let Bekele leave Addis Ababa early during the celebrations so that he could compete here on Friday.
“IAAF President Lamine Diack greatly supported us on this and convinced the Federation to allow Kenenisa to compete in Zürich,” confirmed Magyar.
But the matter was always clear in Bekele’s mind at least.
“Yes, I always intended to run in Zürich,” said the three-time World and two-time Olympic 10,000m champion. “It is a good place, with good organisation, a very famous place to race.”
I just come here to win
But what of his hopes for Friday’s race?
“I’m a little tired, as it is very close to the Olympic Games. I can’t push for a World record anymore (this season).”
“So I don’t talk of records for this race. After my successes in Beijing, I just come here to win.”
Many more years on the track
What of the longer term future, and following Haile Gebrselassie to the marathon?
“The Marathon? It’s too early for me to think of this yet. I still have time to run many more 5000 and 10,000m races, with faster times and breaking records. I want to keep running these distances at World Championships and Olympic Games for many more years,” confirmed Bekele.
It’s a statement which should concern anyone with Olympic aspirations in 2012, and as Bekele only turned 26-years-old in June, perhaps even in 2016!
Thousands of cheering Ethiopians have lined the streets of the capital, Addis Ababa, to welcome home the country’s Olympic gold-medal winning athletes.
Ethiopian PM Meles Zenawi was at the airport to greet the team, led by Kenenisa Bekele and Tirunesh Dibaba, both of whom won two golds at Beijing.
The team was led from the airport in open-topped cars past ecstatic crowds.
Ethiopia traditionally excels at long-distance running and finished 18th overall in the Olympic medal table.
The country’s athletes brought home from Beijing four gold, one silver and two bronze medals, dramatically improving on their haul at Athens four years ago, when they finished 28th.
The airport reception for the athletes was followed by a larger ceremony at Addis Ababa’s 30,000-seater National Stadium.
The crowd there braved the threat of rain as it waited for the athletes, whose aircraft was delayed by more than six hours.
The BBC’s Elizabeth Blunt says the stadium greeted the athletes’ appearance by shouting and jumping up and down, waving Ethiopian flags.
“Our athletes have placed the country among the elite of countries that excel in athletics,” Ethiopia’s Minister of Youth and Sport, Aster Mamo, said at the event.
“We, as a country and government, are very proud of the achievements,” she added.
Kenenisa Bekele described the ceremony as “a special moment”.
“The fans have repaid our success with their enthusiastic welcome,” he said.
Bekele won gold in the 5,000m and 10,000m at Beijing while his compatriot, Tirunesh Dibaba, won gold in the women’s 5,000m and 10,000m.
Legendary Ethiopian long-distance runner Haile Gebrselassie also drew loud applause from the audience, though he did not win any medals at this year’s games.
NEW YORK — The Committee to Protect Journalists calls for the immediate release of Amare Aregawi, managing editor of the English- and Amharic-language newspaper Reporter, who has been detained since August 22 in northern Ethiopia.
Policemen from Ethiopia’s former capital of Gonder arrested Aregawi at his office in the capital, Addis Ababa, at 2 p.m. local time on August 22, according to defense lawyer Abdu Ali. Aregawi was held overnight in an Addis Ababa police station before being transferred some 260 miles (415 kilometers) north to Gonder, he said.
The arrest was linked to a story on a labor dispute between the employees and the management of the government-run Dashen Brewery, a Reporter journalist told CPJ on condition of anonymity. The story quoted employees alleging unlawful dismissals and reported the management’s refusal to comment on the allegations, according to the same source. The board chairman of the brewery, an investment of the ruling party’s Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray, is Bereket Simon, a top senior advisor to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
Aregawi was not formally charged at a court hearing on Monday, but remains in the custody of police in Gonder, Ali told CPJ. A judge was not expected to rule on his petition for bail until September 1, after the public prosecutor requested additional time, he said.
“The arrest of Amare Aregawi highlights the Ethiopian government’s criminalization of critical coverage of issues of public interest,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. “We call on the Ethiopian authorities to release Aregawi immediately and abandon these crude practices of intimidation, which ultimately cow the press into self-censorship.”
Aregawi was the second Reporter journalist held in connection with the story. Teshome Niku, the author of the story, was arrested on June 30 and released on bail, according to Ali. Niku is still officially under investigation. The English version of Reporter is weekly; the Amharic version is biweekly.
Ethiopian authorities routinely use police detentions, threats, legal, and administrative restraints to stop the handful of independently owned media outlets from covering sensitive topics. In 2007, the Committee to Protect Journalists named Ethiopia the world’s worst backslider on press freedom.
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CPJ is a New York-based, independent, nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide. For more information, visit www.cpj.org.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) Somalia’s President Abdullahi Yusuf and his prime minister signed a deal on Tuesday to work together after a weeks-long rift that threatened to wreck their interim government.
Yusuf fell out with Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein earlier this month after Hussein sacked Mogadishu’s powerful mayor, who was a key ally of the president.
Both men have been locked in crisis talks for days with officials in neighbouring Ethiopia.
“We hope the agreement will end the differences between the Somali leaders,” Ethiopia’s Woyanne Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin said after the pair signed the deal in Addis Ababa.
“Ten days ago, the very existence of TFG (transitional federal government) was at a critical point. The differences were a deciding factor that makes or breaks the transitional period, including the peace agreement in Djibouti.”
Despite the rift between Yusuf and Hussein, the government did sign a tentative peace agreement with a faction of the rebel Islamists at U.N.-led talks in Djibouti last week.
But that pact has only served to stoke violence led by another faction of the opposition, whose fighters seized the strategic southern port of Kismayu on Friday.
The deal reached in Addis Ababa came as more than 90 anti-Hussein members of parliament called for the prime minister to be impeached. They accuse him of failing to curb violence and for alleged misuse of government finances.
But Hussein was bullish that the new agreement would work.
“We’re confident that the cabinet will not be defeated in the exercise that is going on in the Somali parliament,” he told reporters in the Ethiopian capital.
(Additional reporting by Mohammed Ahmed in Baidoa; Reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse; Writing by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura; Editing by MacDonald Dzirutwe)
Three rivers in the Gambella region of western Ethiopia have burst their banks following torrential rains that fell in the area for three consecutive days, government officials in the area said.
“We have not yet finalised our assessment, however, an estimated 10,000 to 11,000 people have been displaced,” Akway Abala, team leader for the Disaster Prevention and Food Security Department of Gambella region, told IRIN on 22 August.
A flash flood, he added, had occurred in Lare woreda (district) after the heavy downpour that lasted from 16 to 19 August. Villages in another woreda, Itang, which is located 53km west of Gambella town, were also swept away by a flood on 12 August after the Pukong river burst its banks.
“Residents of the villages [have fled] to the highlands,” Akway said. “Some of them have sheltered with their relatives and others have made temporary huts. After we finalize our assessment, we will appeal for aid from the federal government or other non-governmental organizations.”
Gambella has been repeatedly affected by flash floods whenever rivers draining down to the region from the western highlands of Ethiopia fill up and burst their banks.
The latest reports of a flash flood have come as Ethiopia grapples with a food crisis affecting several million people
Other regions of Ethiopia have also been affected. In April 2007, several houses were damaged by flood waters in the eastern town of Dire Dawa, 515km from Addis Ababa, after heavy rains pounded the area.
The floods swept over the Addis Ketema and Decahtu suburbs, but there were no reports of casualties. In August 2006, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia’s second-largest town with a population of 400,000, was again hit by flash flooding in which at least 250 people died and nearly 10,000 were forced to leave their homes. That flood prompted the town’s administration to build sand banks in the Decahtu, Ashwa, and Hafcat.
The latest reports of a flash flood have come as Ethiopia grapples with a food crisis affecting several million people, as a result of drought, rising global food and fuel prices and poor rains.
BEIJING (AP) — Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia has won the 5,000 meters to complete an unprecedented women’s Olympic distance double.
Tirunesh, the world record-holder, won the 5,000-meter race in 15 minutes, 41.40 seconds on Friday night. It’s her second gold of the Beijing Games after her triumph in the 10,000.
The 23-year-old Tirunesh also won the 5,000-10,000 combination at the 2005 world championships but only chose to defend the 10,000 in Osaka last year.
Elvan Abeylegesse of Turkey won the silver. She also finished second in the 10,000.
Ethiopian world champion Meseret Defar took bronze in the 5,000 in 15:44.12.
