Posted: November 26, 2005

Athletics: Great Ethiopian Run gets ready for another mighty splash

Road races have been part and parcel of the annual athletics calendar for some decades now, but in Africa, they do not come much bigger than the Great Ethiopian Run, whose 5th edition will take place this Sunday (November 27, 2005) in Addis Ababa.

This year’s race will again build on the tradition that has been set in the last four editions with 26,000 participants taking part in what will be Africa’s second largest road race. Two major new things this year will be a separate elite women’s race with a separate early start and a new course designed to accommodate the increased field of mass participants.

Again, Ethiopia’s former two-time Olympic and four-time world 10,00m champion and distance running ace will be present to start the race along with two other distance running greats Romania’s Gabriela Szabo and Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge.

Szabo has been one of the most prolific distance runners in the 90’s taking three world titles as well as breaking world records particularly in indoor races. Now retired from competition, she is the Vice President of the Romanian Athletics Federation.

When Kipchoge won the 2003 world junior cross country title in Lausanne, he was hailed as the next ‘Paul Tergat’ and did not disappoint by taking the world 5000m title the same year ahead of his famous rivals Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj and Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele. A year later, Kipchoge took silver behind the pair in the Athens Olympics and finished fourth in the world championships 5000m race this year.

The race has been some of Ethiopia’s finest runners take part in the last four editions and there will be no shortage of elites once again this year. Leading Ethiopia’s title defense will be defending women’s champion and course record holder Genet Getaneh, Yebeltal Admassu, winner of the 2005 Bahir Dar Run for Girls’ Education, is the leading contender in the men’s race.

Kenya will again be represented by no less than eleven runners (eight men and three women) this year. 2001 Real Berlin Marathon winner Joseph Ngolepus will be the leading Kenyan in the men’s race, while Olga Kimaiyo, fifth in this year’s Great South Run in England, will lead her compatriots as Kenya aim to end Ethiopia’s stronghold of the event.

Apart from the main elite race, there will be a race between twelve ambassadors in Ethiopia. Myles Wickstead, former British Ambassador to Ethiopia and one of the masterminds behind the Great Ethiopian Run project, won the title for three consecutive years between 2001 and 2003 before concluding his term of office in Ethiopia.

The race website is at: www.ethiopiarun.org.