Spring to Bekele's step hides pain in his heart
By Matthew Pryor
Our correspondent on how the Ethiopian has overcome personal tragedy to remain at the top of his sport
IT BEGINS badly. “You’re very fat,” Kenenisa Bekele says as we finish the first lap of the track at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham in sub-15 minute mile pace. “I mean like a wrestler,” he adds, laughing. Maybe it all translates differently in Amharic. Maybe everyone seems a bit fat when you are 5ft 2in, less than eight stone and on your way to becoming the greatest distance runner of all time. Maybe I shouldn’t have stepped on his foot.
This afternoon, Bekele will be back attempting to break another of Haile Gebrselassie’s world records, 8min 04.69sec for two miles, set in Birmingham in 2003. It probably will be beyond him so early in the season, especially as he lost his first 1,500 metres race in the United States last month.
But he is the man for incredible feats. A different man to the boy who was just emerging 3½ years ago when I met him in Addis Ababa at the Great Ethiopian Run. In the past two years, he has lived through more glory and grief than most could imagine.
He likes Birmingham and began his golden year of 2004 by breaking the first of three world records held by Gebrselassie, his mentor and fellow Ethiopian, in the 5,000 metres indoors. He went on to win his third consecutive double at the World Cross Country Championships (no one previously had achieved one double).
In a ten-day period, he took both Gebrselassie’s 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres world records, then won gold and silver in the Athens Olympics in the 10,000 metres and 5,000 metres respectively.
He was crowned male athlete of the year in Monaco, had a hit song Anbessa — meaning lion in Amharic — written about him and was engaged to be married to Alem Techale, the world youth 1,500 metres champion.
They were both from the eastern region where Gebrselassie and Gete Wami are from, but lived and trained together in Addis Ababa. On January 4, 2005, they were running on the outskirts of the capital. Ten minutes in, Bekele slowed and rejoined Techale, but found her barely able to stand as she held on to a tree. She was in pain and asked him to pray for her. She was struggling to breathe, he said.
He rushed her to hospital but she could not be revived and died of heart failure. She was 18. He was 22. He arrived in Birmingham this time last year a shadow of himself and lost. “It has changed me, everything has changed. Now is better, I’m back now,” he says. “Last year I didn’t train and I lost races I could have won. This year, I’m more focused.”
However, he later admits: “Although professionally everything is OK, inside it has changed me. I had all these plans, I was planning to get married and start a family and I can’t think about that anymore. It has changed my future and I am still trying to deal with it.”
Jos Hermans, Bekele’s manager for five years (and Gebrselassie’s for 16), encouraged his charge to take a long break at the end of last season.
“There is definitely still pain and grief,” Hermans said. “He bounced back incredibly at the world cross country and that, for me, was his most incredible performance, better than his world records.”
Bekele’s form in 2005 was again outstanding, becoming the 10,000 metres world champion, then breaking his own world record at that distance.
Bekele will attempt a fifth consecutive double in the world cross country in Japan in April, but will run 1,500 metres and 3,000 metres more often to build up speed.
He has already rewritten the record books, written by Gebrselassie. “They are different people and sometimes it’s frustrating for Kenenisa to be compared all the time,” Hermans said. “Haile is his mentor but there is also a rivalry. Kenenisa does not want to stay the pupil.”