Ethiopia runs for inimitable icon

Ethiopia's most revered son Haile Gebrselassie will oversee the 11th edition of the largest road race in Africa which this Sunday morning will attract around 36,000 participants to the streets of Addis Ababa. - (Getty Images)

Emmet Malone is on hand to experience the warmth reserved for local hero Haile Gebrselassie in Addis Ababa as he launches the 11th Great Ethiopian Run

A few months back my wife and I had a chance meeting with Ray Houghton out at a hotel adjacent to Dublin airport. Gráinne’s obvious pleasure at meeting the man who put the ball in not only England ’s but also Italy’s was a stark reminder of how much I take for granted in this business.

Many of the people I speak to in the course of my work wouldn’t merit the conversation if they weren’t heroes to a lot of people out there, but that’s rarely a consideration when you’re mentally weighing up what the angle’s going to be, while they’re speaking

With Houghton, it’s particularly easy to forget, not least because he is one of the nicest, most unassuming and friendly people you could ever hope to meet and because of his media work I’m lucky enough to bump into him a fair bit.

Given his achievements as a player, not least those goals, Houghton’s enormous popularity, of course, is easy to understand but multiply it by 50, maybe even 500, and you get an idea of the warmth with which Haile Gebrselassie is viewed in Ethiopia.

Over the course of more than a decade at the top of world distance running, the now 38 year-old has won two Olympic and four World titles as well as a string of high profile marathons (most notably London and Berlin) and other major distance races setting, in the process, a fair few world records.

He’s won a lot of money down the years too and seems to have invested wisely back here at home in Ethiopia, where he owns, amongst other things, office blocks, cinemas, a car dealership, hotels and restaurants. He continues to have outside earnings too and around Addis at the moment he can be seen on giant billboards advertising everything from airlines to alcohol.

He is, in other words, a rich man in a country with more than its fair share of poor ones, but it doesn’t seem to have affected his popularity in the slightest. Most everyone you meet here mentions him like a favourite uncle.

A little over 10 years ago he played a key part in establishing the 10km Great Ethiopian Run, the largest road race in Africa which this Sunday morning will attract around 36,000 participants to the streets of Addis. To judge by the pictures and accounts of previous participants it’s slightly magical event and its draw has proved sufficiently strong this year to attract both the Irish Times athletics correspondent Ian O’Riordan and myself, entirely independently of each other. Both of us will be writing about different aspects of the race (Ian will actually be taking part) over the coming days and weeks.

Though he hasn’t taken part himself since the first year - a decade ago today to be precise - when he helped coax 14,000 or so runners back after a mass false start, before leaving the VIP podium after the restart to join in and eventually win; he continues to be a central figure in its organisation. Indeed, the press conference held this morning at the city’s Hilton Hotel to preview this year’s event was as much about the man who sat quietly smiling in the front row as it was about the race itself.

He was name-checked regularly, often to applause, by other speakers, who all acknowledged that while many deserve a great deal of credit for the success of this event, it simply couldn’t have happened without Haile. When he spoke himself, though, he was humble and humorous and instantly recaptured the attention of a big crowd whose interest had been drifting after what seemed like a couple of hours of speeches and presentations.

“People complain about inflation and shortages of sugar or oil these days,” he said with a smile that never seems to completely leave his face. “But as we are concentrating on having a nice life we should remember how far this country has come in 20 years.”

He mentioned the fact that it used to be hard to buy a pastry in the city “but now there are hundreds of places selling them on Bole Road (a long, busy street lined with offices, shops and countless restaurants) alone.

“Back then,” he added, “the shortage of sugar wasn’t what we were complaining about.”

He talked about the boost to the country’s image abroad that the race generates, the tourism (there are around 200 Irish running for a start), its work in the areas of education and equality amongst local children and the funds its raises. The latter are modest enough in the great scheme of things with the people of a small town in Norway, Knarvik, raising as much for the central fund (many foreigners, including most of the Irish run for designated charities based in their own countries but doing work in the field here like Concern, Orbis and Self Help Africa) as the all local efforts combined this year (about €20,000) through a race of their own and various other activities.

But, he emphasised, as everyone else associated with it does, that generating money is not the main aim; the race is an end in itself.

On Saturday morning a couple of thousand kids will get to run in the children’s event (organised by another NGO with links back home, Plan) and on Sunday tens of thousands will take part in the main event, including, if past years are anything to go on, a few of the sport’s biggest stars of the future. That in itself is an achievement in a city where sport, at least in its organised forms, is something of a luxury for large chunks of the population and where the benefits it brings in terms of health and happiness, the effect it has on the development of character and positive relationships can go unknown by many whose primary objective has to be simply to get by.

When he waves away his team of minders, who feel he’s done enough media after the press conference and point out that he is already running late for his next appointment, in order to chat amiably for a few minutes with the Irish Times , he admits there’s a long way to go and it doesn’t take you a long time walking around the busy, fairly chaotic streets of the Ethiopian capital to see what he means.

However, he says he has big ambitions for the future and nothing about him so far would remotely entice you to bet against him achieving them all.
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