PRESS DIGEST
Long-distance curse has stars running scared
Duncan Mackay, The Guardian (London)
February 13, 1998
Four Ethiopian men came out of Africa to win Olympic gold medals only for tragedy or controversy to touch all their lives. One is dead, one is in prison and two fear political persecution:
Abebe Bikila Marathon, 1960 and 1964
ABEBE BIKILA brought black Africa its first Olympic gold medal in athletics when he padded barefoot through the streets of Rome to win the 1960 marathon. It was an astonishing victory that heralded the beginning of the emerging power of Africans in the world of athletics.
It was somehow ironic and fitting that Bikila should choose Rome as the stage for his magnificent run. He was only three when his country was invaded by Mussolini’s Italian troops. Now it was his turn to conquer as he won in 2hr 15min 17sec, an Olympic and world record.
With bare feet and a silken stride, the 5ft. 9in. Bikila personified the natural, unbound runner that we have come to admire out of Africa. Originally from a family of shepherds, Bikila spent most of his adult life as a member of Emperor Haile-Selassie’s Imperial Bodyguard. His Olympic triumphs earned him promotions to the rank of captain.
In the years after the 1960 Olympics, Bikila set out on a worldwide marathon tour, stimulating increased interest in the event. But the chances of him repeating his Rome triumph in Tokyo in 1964 seemed to sink when he had to undergo an emergency appendectomy only weeks before the Games. However, this time running in shoes, he took over the lead at eight miles and never relinquished it, setting another Olympic and world record of 2hr 12min 12sec.
Then in 1969 Bikila was injured in a car crash which left him paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. He spent several months at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, where he had a number of operations on his damaged spine. None was successful but he continued to display a remarkable strength of character. He took up archery from his wheelchair and competed in several Paraplegic Games. ‘I was elated with my gold medals and I accepted these as part of life,’ Bikila said. ‘So I must accept the circumstances of my accident as part of life.’ He had begun to carve out a new life for himself when he died from a brain hemorrhage in 1973 at the age of only 41. The news of his death shocked the whole world and he received a state funeral in Addis Abeba. But his legacy is the Africans running successfully in his footsteps.
Mamo Wolde Marathon, 1968
MAMO WOLDE’S marathon victory at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City made him an instant celebrity in Ethiopia. Gifts and honors were showered upon him and, like Abebe Bikila, brought promotion to the rank of captain in the Palace Guard of the ageing Haile Selassie.
In 1974, however, the emperor was overthrown by Ethiopian military leaders who, under Mengistu Haile Mariam, created a brutal communist government known as the Derg. While many of the elite Palace Guard were executed, Mamo Wolde was spared because of his status and he became a local government official.
After Mengistu’s regime was overturned in 1991, there was a round-up of people suspected of involvement in the Red Terror torture and execution campaign of the late Seventies, including Mamo Wolde, who is still being held as a prisoner without trial after six years.
His case did not come to light until the following year when Amnesty International were alerted to his imprisonment. They say they have seen no evidence to suggest that Wolde had been implicated in any human rights abuses. It seems extraordinary that the Ethiopian government, in view of Wolde’s standing within the international sporting community, has not bothered to substantiate the allegations. It has cited the problems of reconstituting the judiciary after the civil war as the main reason for not bringing more than 1,700 suspects to trial. But that war ended seven year ago.
Housed in part of the maximum-security section of the Kerechele prison in Addis Abeba, known as the “End of the World,” it is not surprising that the 66-year-old Wolde has become depressed during his detention, and there are fears about his health. “He has recently been constantly coughing, and I am worried about his condition,” his wife Aberash Woldesmayat said. “I am worried he might die.” The International Olympic Committee and the International Amateur Athletic Federation have each contacted the respective Ethiopian Olympic and athletic organizations to try to have him released. But since those officials are also members of the government, it has proved a fruitless policy.
Last year the IOC sent the Kenyan Olympic gold medalist Kip Keino and the former United States decathlete Bill Toomey to plead for Wolde’s release. The former U.S. marathon runner Kenny Moore, who finished fourth behind the bronze medal winner Wolde at the Munich Games in 1972, has also visited Ethiopia on a similar, futile mission. But the Ethiopian authorities have made it clear that only a court could set Wolde free.
Miruts Yifter 5,000 and 10,000m, 1980
TO LOOK at Miruts Yifter now—short, bald and portly, and dressed in a dirty grey suit—it is easy to forget he was once the finest distance runner in the world.
Then again the bow-legged little goat farmer was never much to look at. But when he completed his historic 5,000 and 10,000 meters double at the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980, he astonished the world by his change of pace on the last lap and was memorably dubbed ‘Yifter the Shifter” by David Coleman.
A generation of Ethiopian boys grew up wanting to be like Yifter, including Haile Gebrselassie. Yifter’s name still evokes incredible respect in Addis Abeba, where there is a street named after him. Yet the man himself has fled to Toronto and is seeking political asylum.
“He has a political problem at home and has started a formal process to be allowed to stay,” says Muluken Muchie, the editor of Hawarya, the Amharic-language newspaper within the Ethiopian expatriate community in Canada. “He claims he is being persecuted by the government for things he knows nothing about. He has several children at home but none of them are small and he wants to start a new life away from Ethiopia.”
“When I left Ethiopia I was deeply depressed and full of sorrow,” Miruts Yifter says.
Yifter’s career included as many downs as ups. In 1972 his bronze medal in the 10,000m was marred by his disqualification from the 5,000m for failing to turn up on time for his heat. He claimed a political conspiracy against him within the Ethiopian team, though subsequent explanations have suggested that he was misdirected at the check-in gate, or that he spent too long in the toilet before the start. Yifter was then robbed of the chance of redemption in 1976 by the African boycott of the Montreal Games over New Zealand’s rugby tour of South Africa.
Haile Gebrselassie 10,000m, 1996
WHILE Haile Gebrselassie is mobbed every time he walks the streets of Addis Abeba, thousands of miles away in the Netherlands his brother trains alone, frightened to return home to the country in which he was born and grew up.
Tekeye inspired Haile to take up running and gave him his first pair of training shoes. “He was such a fantastic runner that I wanted to be like him,” Haile says. “I owe everything to him.” But Tekeye—a former 2hr 11min marathon runner who represented Ethiopia in the World Cup event in London seven years ago—fled his homeland four years ago and is in political asylum in the Netherlands with several other Ethiopians.
Haile Gebrselassie, the star attraction at the BUPA Indoor Grand Prix in Birmingham in February, has always maintained a vow of silence over his brother’s predicament. “It’s too sensitive,” he says. “I don’t want to say anything.” But his pained expression betrays his inner feelings. “It hurts Haile to know what is happening to his brother,” says one of his team-mates. “He understands Tekeye’s fear but doesn’t want to make things difficult for his family remaining in Ethiopia.”
“There’s no athlete who is happy with the way things are run in Ethiopia,” says Almaz Wondaferhu, an Ethiopian coach who sought asylum in Britain three years ago after the world cross-country championships in Durham. “Everyone thinks it is okay now in Ethiopia, that we have a democratic government,” she says, “but it is not okay.”
Overall, elite athletes lead a generally desirable life in Ethiopia, mainly because they are permitted some degree of world travel to make money. But it is a gilded cage, they say. “We were threatened and told to stop following our political beliefs or we would not be allowed to compete,” says Tekeye. “I was very frightened. That is why I left.”
