Bekele, Kenenisa

▪ 2004

      At the 2002 International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) world cross country championships in Dublin, 19-year-old Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele, running with an apparently effortless stride, won the senior long-course (12-km [7.5-mi]) and short-course (4-km [2.5-mi]) titles—a feat never before accomplished by a male runner. Experts who wondered what such an athlete might accomplish in track races had to wait for the answer, as an Achilles tendon injury cut short Bekele's 2002 track season. In March 2003, however, he was healthy for the world cross country championships in Lausanne, Switz., where he repeated his astonishing double victory.

      Bekele was born on June 13, 1982, near the town of Bekoji in the central Ethiopian province of Arsi. His parents were farmers who grew teff, wheat, sorghum, and barley and raised cattle and sheep. The young Bekele admired Ethiopian Olympic gold-medal-winning runners Haile Gebrselassie, Fatuma Roba, and Bekoji native Derartu Tulu, but his first athletic love was association football (soccer).

      Bekele attended school through the ninth grade, and it was at school that he was introduced to running. He finished fourth in his first race, but in 1998 he won a provincial cross country title and placed sixth in the Ethiopian junior championships. His success led to an invitation to join the Mugher Cement Factory team, coached by Tolosa Kotu, then the Ethiopian national marathon coach.

      In 1999 Bekele placed ninth in the junior race at the world cross country championships and took the silver medal in the 3,000 m at the IAAF world youth championships. Illness kept him off the Ethiopian squad for the 2000 world cross country championships, but at that year's world junior championships he won silver in the 5,000 m. At the 2001 world cross country championships, held in Ostend, Belg., he placed second in the senior short-course event and raced to a 33-sec victory margin in the junior race.

      On June 1, 2003, Bekele finally showed what he could do on a track, defeating world-record-holder Gebrselassie in the 10,000-m race at the IAAF Grand Prix in Hengelo, Neth. He bested Gebrselassie again in August at the IAAF world championships in Paris, where he ran the fastest 10,000 m in championships history, timed at 26 min 49.57 sec. Bekele's time for the second half of the race, 12 min 57.24 sec, was almost a second faster than the existing world-championships record for 5,000 m. He placed third in the 5,000-m final. In September at the IAAF World Athletics Final, held in Monaco, Bekele won gold in the 3,000 m.

      While Bekele was establishing a reputation as one of the greatest cross country runners in history, however, he faced a potential challenger in his 16-year-old brother, Tariku, who finished second in the 3,000-m final at the IAAF world youth championships in July.

Sieg Lindstrom

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