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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)
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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.”
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.
http://www.irishtimes.com
http://www.irishtimes.com
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