Bekele starts another journey over nine kilometres at today’s Bupa Great
Edinburgh International Cross Country event. If talent alone bred media
attention, he would be mobbed, but he moves without hindrance. It was the
same in London on Thursday, when, even on the 21st floor of a tower block
overlooking the Olympic site, he kept a low profile.
To recap: Bekele won the 5,000 and 10,000 metres double at the World
Championships in Berlin last August, but was afforded footnote status in the
rush to praise Bolt. Those wins mean Bekele has won a mind-boggling 24
Olympic and world titles. Never beaten over 10,000 metres, the breaker of
six world records, yet he is compared to Bolt, Beckham and Haile
Gebrselassie, and, outside the athletics bubble, is rarely judged on his own
merits.
This need to enter the mainstream on the back of others’ fame reached its
zenith last September when a possible race with Bolt over 600 metres was
mooted.
Bekele’s manager, Jos Hermens, was happy to whip up interest, saying he would
think about it over the winter. Bekele now concedes it was a joke. “I was
asked a question and I said if somebody organised the race then I would race
Bolt,” he said. “But it was not serious. It was like a joke.”
Purists will be grateful because there is no need for such a gifted runner to
demean himself with novelty records and the real goals are more meaningful.
“My target this year is to break the world record for the 5,000 metres and
also break the 3,000 metres record, indoors and out,” he said.
At 27, he says time is running out and that this will be his last chance to
lower those marks. Ultimately, he is eyeing the marathon. “There is no
chance I would do a marathon in 2012,” he said. “It is too early for me.
Maybe in four or five years I will think about it.”
He does not envy Bolt or Gebrselassie. “You have to remember that what Usain
did at the Olympics was unique,” he said. “He not only won two [individual]
gold medals but he broke two world records. I have had a lot of respect, but
a lot of people only concentrate on the 100 metres and you should not forget
those who make the longer distances.”
Anyone who saw Bekele beat Bernard Lagat in Berlin in the 5,000 metres final
will never forget it. The American passed Bekele on the home straight. Cue
hidden resources, a wonderful surge and a brilliant comeback. “Bekele
doesn’t get the recognition he deserves,” Bolt said.
The curiosity is that he has the back story to match the talent. Born two
years before the famine that ruined millions of lives, he said he was lucky
because his father was a barley farmer. He watched Gebrselassie win gold at
the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 on television and was inspired. In 2001 he
broke the world junior record for the 3,000 metres.
Then he began to dominate the cross-country scene, breaking Kenya’s
stranglehold on the sport, before winning the first of his Olympic titles in
Athens in 2004.
The future seemed bright but then, five years ago last Monday, his fiancée,
Alem Techale, dropped dead of a heart attack while they were out running
together. It was four months until their wedding day.
Bekele fled to a nearby hotel screaming: “She’s fallen.” He dragged a waiter
to the spot to help and cried: “Angel Gabriel, what have I done to deserve
this?” She was buried the day after, with Bekele growing a beard, in keeping
with tradition, and saying he was half a man. “It was a very difficult time
and I did wonder about whether I could carry on,” he said. “It still makes
me very grateful for what I have now. It makes me appreciate things.”
Like his new wife, Danawit Gebregziabher, a film star and half of what Hermens
describes as “the Posh and Becks of Ethiopia”.
That hard-earned perspective also helped him through a tough period in 2007
when he dropped out of the senior race at the World Cross Country
Championships in Mombasa, Kenya, with barely a kilometre left to run. Knives
were sharpened. Then Bekele and his brother, Tariku, encountered a lion on a
training run outside Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia.
“The shepherds said they only had cheetahs in the area but I know what I saw,”
he said. “It was only 100 metres away. I was a bit scared.”
He got through it all and today has no fears as he faces a stellar field in
Holyrood Park. Nor will the snow bother Bekele because he is heading a
campaign to have cross country included at the Winter Olympics, but on top
of a London tower block this week it was the summer of 2012 that captured
his imagination. The travesty is that it may take until then for Britain to
wake up to a sporting legend.
Hallmarks of a champion
27 Age and cross-country races unbeaten until failed to finish at World
Championships in 2007
3 Olympic titles
5 World titles
6 Senior world records broken
757 Seconds to claim 5,000 metres world record in 2004
11 Senior world cross-country titles
0 Times beaten over 10,000 metres since debut win over Haile
Gebrselassie in 2003
