Gete Wami, right, and Paula Radcliffe, who edged Wami in the 2007 New York City Marathon. [Photo: Frank Franklin II/AP]
By LIZ ROBBINS, The New York Times
One year the marathon fates can be charitable, the next year, crushing. Such is the fickle sport Gete Wami chose for her career when she was a teenager in Ethiopia.
In an intense span of 13 months, Wami, 33, has run the gamut in four marathons. She won Berlin in 2007 and then collected a $500,000 bonus prize after finishing a close second five weeks later in New York.
But in April 2008, she was in the lead pack when she fell hard at a water stop in London. She limped to a third-place finish. Then in August, Wami dropped out after 18.5 miles at the Beijing Olympics with intestinal distress.
“This will be my first marathon since then, and I will run thinking of Beijing and how to make it better,” Wami said demurely in Amharic, as her husband and coach, Getaneh Tessema, translated a telephone interview from Addis Ababa this month.
Wami’s toughest rival, Paula Radcliffe of Britain, understands about finding redemption in New York. Radcliffe, 34, the world-record holder, dropped out of the 2004 Athens Olympic marathon at the 22-mile mark and faced unrelenting criticism from the British news media. She returned to win the New York City Marathon three months later.
Last year, Radcliffe edged Wami in New York after a thrilling duel, and once again is trying to vanquish the demons of an Olympic failure. Radcliffe hobbled to 23rd place in Beijing when seized by leg cramps; injuries curtailed her pre-Olympic training. It was the first time in eight marathons that Radcliffe finished the race but did not win.
Radcliffe and Wami share more than recent painful memories. They have competed against each other 33 times since 1991, from cross-country to the track to the roads. Wami holds a 26-7 record, all her victories coming before 2001.
They are friendly when they see each other off the course, but not exactly effusive.
“I’ve raced Gete so much, I’ve always known how strong she is,” Radcliffe said during a teleconference last month.
Wami said, “Paula is such a strong athlete, I like to run with her.”
Last year, the 5-foot Wami ran in Radcliffe’s 5-foot-8 shadow for 26 miles, even clipping her heels twice, before surging briefly ahead. But Wami’s legs felt like lead from having raced five weeks earlier in Berlin, and her stomach was churning, too. Radcliffe matched the move and stormed to the finish line, but Wami earned an enormous consolation prize.
Wami won the inaugural World Marathon Majors series, a two-year cumulative points series tabulating the elite runners’ best results through the London, Boston, Berlin, Chicago and New York marathons.
Wami is again in position to cash in. She is tied for the lead with Germany’s Irina Mikitenko, the 2008 Berlin and London marathon winner, with 65 points. Wami needs only to finish first or second to collect because Mikitenko, who chose not to run New York, opted not to attempt the back-to-back majors feat.
“Money isn’t everything,” Mikitenko told reporters last month in Berlin. “I’ve already done very well, winning London and Berlin,” she added, saying she wanted to be healthy for next year’s world championships in Berlin.
Wami was 17 when she drew her first monthly paycheck ($14) running for a police club. She sent money to her parents, who own a farm in a village about 75 miles northeast of Addis Ababa.
Wami and her husband have a 5-year-old daughter, Eva, and live in a modest house about a mile from Haile Gebrselassie’s mansion in Addis Ababa.
The couple has done nothing with her 2007 earnings yet. Wami said last November that she planned to build an orphanage in Ethiopia, but Tessema explained that “she is still concentrating on her career now.”
Wami has an Olympic silver medal and two bronze medals on the track, but no gold in the marathon, her specialty the last six years. “She was so emotionally decimated by the Olympics that I had been concerned it would be hard for her to come back,” said Mary Wittenberg, the New York Road Runners chief executive, who was in Beijing to watch the race.
“That Olympic gold in the marathon,” Wittenberg added, “would have cemented her at the top of the list as one of the most accomplished female distance runners.”
Wami said she thought she could still make that list. On Oct. 3, as a warm-up to New York, she ran a personal-best half-marathon time (1 hour 8 minutes 51 seconds) to win the Great North Run in Newcastle, England. She injured a hamstring, but has been training steadily since, hoping to find more than just a consolation prize this year.
“You have good times, you have bad times,” Tessema said. “In London she falls down, in Beijing she had the stomach. The only thing you can do is go on with your life.”