Is Solomon Haile really 20 years old?

interested observer wrote:

I've been following this whole discussion with interest. As to the whole date/Ethiopian calendar issue related in the Washington Post. According to the Public Relations Officer at the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington:

1. An Ethiopian passport lists the date of birth both according to the Ethipian and the Western calendar. The passport information is in both Amharic and English.

2. The age of a person is the same no matter what calendar you use. Either way, a person would say, I'm 20, or I'm 16, or whatever age s/he is.

This is exactly right. The whole story Naomi told about getting the age wrong because she was using the Coptic calendar is complete BS and I can't believe those enlightened PC geniuses in Montgomery County are falling for that. The Coptic calendar has 365 days a year, just like the Gregorian calendar. The Coptic calendar uses a 13th month of 4 or 5 days to augment 12 30 day months. I also believe the Coptic calendar began in about the year 384 or something, so it doesn't take a mathematical superhero to figure out how old you are using the Coptic calendar. Jeesh!

It is also quite bizarre that boy wonder Solomon ran all these races, took prize checks and redeemable gift certificates, and never cashed or used one of them. Huh???

It is clear Montgomery County and Maryland do not want a lawsuit or a big controversy on their hands. They just want to get this man graduated and gone next spring, hoping the story will just go away.

Yes, they just want the issue to go away. Ned Sparks, Maryland athletic commissioner, is an idiot. The lawsuit option is definitely gaining some traction...the whole thing is going to break open once Haile wins a Footlocker title.

Then I'm sure you know what year it is in Ethiopia right now.

the real mobile9 wrote:

Then I'm sure you know what year it is in Ethiopia right now.

Yes. 2008. Ethiopians are pretty plugged in to what's going on the world, and they damn well know what year it is in the Gregorian calendar and what year they were born on that calendar. The Western calendar is what the whole world uses for commerce, diplomacy, etc... Haile comes from an established family, not some illiterate backwater tribe in a National Geographic documentary. Don't fall for that sham.

If the math fails, all he has to do is look at his passport, which he needed for all his travels and visa applications :)

To get the visas, you have to go for an interview at the Embassy in Ethiopia; to come to the US, his sister had to sponsor him; to go to Austria, he needed a written invitation, passport, ROUNDTRIP airline ticket, proof of funds, etc. etc. and during all that time, his birth date (by the Western calendar) and his age (by whatever calendar) never came up in the discussions between him and his sister and the friends/cousins he visited during all that time (January to Thailand, October to Austria, and then to the US????) Oh, and Thailand and Austria did not use whatever US site she used to register him. He may still be born in 1990, but it sure raises a lot of doubts.

BTW, the year is 2001 in Ethiopia (the new year started on September 11).

^^^^ u are right it is 2001, bare facts u are wrong dont just speak out of your ass get some fact it is 2001 there and the also do not have only 12 months like us im not sure how many they have but its more than 12, so get your facts staright and stop hating on him because he is foreign

Not to defend everything he says, but he did clearly state that he believes there are 13 months in the optic calendar, 12 of 30 days and a 13th that has a few days in it...

so you get your facts straight because a simple google or wiki search will do that for you...

I think what "bare facts" was trying to say is that they know the world calendar in Ethiopia. For instance, the Ethiopians managed to figure out how to get to the Olympics on time. Also, every international race haile did had a non Ethipoian date on them and HE managed to get there. He knows what year it is. Even if he didn't, he would have been 7 years off, not 3 or 4.

Once again, plenty of posts with no relevant facts or analysis. Just mindless speculation or general misinformation from a bunch of knuckle-heads.

Here are the relevant facts.

A runner has competed as a 20 year old professional all around the world.

This runner is now competing as a high school runner.

This runner is giving illogical and conflicting arguments as to why he has gotten three years younger in the last two years.

stillmatic460 wrote:

^^^^ u are right it is 2001, bare facts u are wrong dont just speak out of your ass get some fact it is 2001 there and the also do not have only 12 months like us im not sure how many they have but its more than 12, so get your facts staright and stop hating on him because he is foreign

I said there are 13 months in the Coptic calendar you dumbass.

You're the one who's hating. You know why? You assume foreigners are all a bunch of clueless idiots who can't figure out what year it is in the Western calendar or how old they are. Here's a news flash for you: I've worked in Ethiopia and travelled there many times. You'd be surprised how much they know and understand about the world, not to mention the ones who have immediate family members living in the U.S.! I don't have anything against Solomon Haile. He may be a great guy. But there are serious holes in his story. Being very familiar with Ethiopia, when I read Naomi's Coptic calendar excuse in the Washington Post I nearly fell out of my chair laughing. You got to hand it to those Montgomery County "investigators", they are one sharp bunch.

Barefacts is right; call the Embassy. It may sound confusing to us, but the fact that a country uses TWO calendars is not that terribly unusual, and people have no problem: E.g. Saudia Arabia uses the Islamic calendar for official use but obviously nobody has problems with the Western calendar either:

http://www.saudicommercialoffice.com/calendar_and_public_holidays.html

I get confused by what I've read in the Washington Post and on Dyestat, and what's presented on the message board as fact. If these are not facts, then let me know, and let me know how you know.

1 - A charge was made that he was a professional runner. The Hartford half-marathon even confirmed he'd been issued a check. An investigation revealed the family could produce uncashed checks, and the Hartford half-marathon verified the check had in fact expired, uncashed. There is no evidence that he received financial gain from any race.

2 - The charge was that his birth date was prior to 1990, because he'd actually run multiple races registered as 20. The family contended that there was an age mix-up in earlier race registration due to an error made by his sister who registered him, and he would actually turn 19 in Jan 2009. In an investigation the state obtained school records from Ethiopia that line up properly with the birth records provided, indicating a Jan 1990 birth date.

NothingNew wrote:

I get confused by what I've read in the Washington Post and on Dyestat, and what's presented on the message board as fact. If these are not facts, then let me know, and let me know how you know.

2 - The charge was that his birth date was prior to 1990, because he'd actually run multiple races registered as 20. The family contended that there was an age mix-up in earlier race registration due to an error made by his sister who registered him, and he would actually turn 19 in Jan 2009. In an investigation the state obtained school records from Ethiopia that line up properly with the birth records provided, indicating a Jan 1990 birth date.

It is a fact that the family claimed this. It is not necessarily a fact that this claim is actually truthful.

Do you or do you not put your age down EACH and EVERY time you register for a new race? So even if Naomi did in fact register him once as a 20 year old because in her daily grind as a resident of the U.S. she often gets confused as to what year it is in the West, this one time would not mean that his age would continue to show up as 20 at subsequent races unless he or she continued to enter the erroneous age. I can accept the possibility that he was claiming to be older than he actually was because he thought he needed to be that old to accept prize money (even though that's not true, I'll cut him some slack). I cannot accept that this was some sort of innocent clerical error due to the use of the wrong calendar. Sorry, my BS meter is pegging on that one.

If he really is 18 and was lying about being older, just fess up about it. No harm, no foul. He still would be perfectly eligible.

He told a newspaper he was here to run professionally and was seeking an agent. The fact that he never cashed a check is just bizarre. He did, however, race around the world. (and managed to figure out the date of these races just fine). He put his age down as the same every time until he decided to run as a high school student. If you read the NCAA rule book, simply opening yourself up to making money (seeking an agent) makes you ineligible. I've actually trained with some Africans including Ethiopians and they all knew how old they were (I've been running since the 90's and even then they knew). I also knew a runner who wrote his government and told them what he wanted on the documents and they sent them. He actually had the documents that exactly contradicted the ones he asked for in his apartment. He received the "official" documents exactly as he asked.

Just wanted to be post #199...almost exactly 10 posts for every year that Solomon Haile has been on the earth.

As the parent of two young athletes (elem. and middle school), I am tired of overaged kids cheating to win. At a recent baseball tournament for 9-10 year-olds, there were a couple kids who were clearly 12. My older son is 13 and he has kids in his class who are a year older than him. Parents are holding back their kids for sports and high schoolers are graduating at 19 1/2. It's ridiculous. Graham Bazell still holds the Hereford course record, Tommy Gruenewald the VCP record. The truth will come out about Haile. The Footlocker people won't mess around like the Maryland schools. I can't see how this kid can feel satisfied with himself by beating opponents who aren't even shaving yet. There is a huge difference between a 17-year-old senior and a 20-year-old "senior." A couple years back a Footlocker winner, Ken Cormier, looked three years older than the others. I think he was only a year and a half older and he was certainly legal to run, but his age definitely gave him an edge.

Footlocker has a lot more to worry about than Haile. Their days are numbered and they'll take anyone who's still willing to come. I guarantee they don't put him under a microscope. (To be fair, neither would Nike).

You didn't answer my question (not surprising), but I'll answer yours. Once again THE BARE FACTS is anything but. You don't necessarily "put your age down EACH and EVERY time you register for a new race". This is from the Dyestat article:

"she made an error on his year of birth, an error she says was a combination of the large number of siblings she has and a mistake she made converting the birthday Solomon provided from the Ethiopian calendar to the one commonly used in the United States. Naomi says that error, saddling Haile with a birth year of 1987 instead of 1990, was repeated on the entry for the half marathon in Austria, and again when Haile traveled to the United States to compete in the Hartford Half Marathon. In the case of the US race, the registration was completed on-line with Active.com, creating a member profile in the database which followed Solomon in successive races contested using the same registration company. A check of most of the Virginia and Washington D.C.-area road races Solomon entered in 2007 confirms that they currently use Active.com for race registration."