Who ran onto the track after the Women’s 5k?

I think he was just some random Ethiopian fan and it is interesting to compare Ethiopian fans with Kenyan fans with the former much more fanatical in their approach and much more demonstrative. We see this type of behavior time and again after Ethiopian wins.

So, he had a Tigrayan flag. Tigray is a region of Ethiopia (home to a lot of its best distance runners, including Letesenbet and Gudaf, I believe) that's been involved in an awful civil war with the Ethiopian government for a couple years now. There's a lot of background to get why that's happening (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigray_War) but in short: political dispute turned into violence, and led to a massive humanitarian crisis and ethnic-based murders. Specific to track, the war has cut off a lot of these Tigrayan athletes from their families since 2020.

Wasn't Me

If he was doing it as a statement for Tigray it’s worth noting the two athletes he embraced are from the region. There was a news report with Gideys family and it was very sad to see that they can’t communicate with her and only hear of her exploits days later.

Ah ok, thanks for clearing that up. Just wanted to be sure what wasn’t some crazy fan.

Imagine if he had bad intentions, or stormed in during the race. Organizers really dropped the ball here.

Spoke to him after the race. More to come.

How does running on to the track give a voice to the people in the region of Tigray? Serious question. What's the justification?

Well, We just listened to his story and learned a bit about their situation... Because he ran onto the track, no?

A good man.

Hard to imagine the girls being from there representing a country thats oppressing their people.

If anyones read about the Tigray war going on, its brutal and almost fully ignored.

Well think about this video that Gault posted. Who was really harmed by him running onto the track?

How many people had never heard of Tigray or that theres a war going on there?

I think what he did was a great positive thing to expose Ethiopias role there.

Great interview! Absolutely sad to hear about the humanitarian crisis.

Reading on the situation but articles are conflicting. Curious on what the end goal is ? Is Tigray wanting to succeed from Ethiopia, seems like they held elections without the permission of the Ethiopian gov leading to the conflict. Does anyone have intimate knowledge of the issue?

The TPLF who govern Tigray were in charge of the Ethiopian government for about 30 years after they were instrumental in overthrowing the Derg (previous Marxist regime). While overthrowing of the Derg was celebrated, TPLF did not have popular support in Ethiopia and while leading Ethiopia were accused of human rights violations such as jailing political opponents. A few years ago during a time of protests and tension, they stepped down and Abiy Ahmed was democratically elected. Ahmed freed political prisoners and won the Nobel Peace Prize but I think continued to fear the intentions of TPLF and saw them as wanting to return to power, leading to tensions between Ahmed's government and TPLF that set the conditions for this war. The local elections dispute followed from that. Ahmed's peace prize has since been criticized as his tactics in war have imperiled many Tigrayan civilians and created a refugee crisis, though TPLF or its supporters have also done bad things in the name of this war.

Did he estimate how much they weigh? Any good people lifer has this skill.

Why did you start that with "so?"

Thanks for sharing! Super helpful to be familiar with the underlying political motivations of each side.

I find it odd they are protesting the Ethiopian gov. Shouldn’t they be directing their voice towards their local leaders instead ? It seems the war is resulting directly from the TPLF party wanting to regain power as you stated. If the Tigray leaders calm down, it seems unimaginable the Ethiopian gov. would continue the war.

I definitely learned something about a situation I admittedly knew nothing about but you can't let him back into Hayward like they did; needed to be banned from the meet.

We're talking about it, aren't we?