Addis/Blogger

Zeresenay Tadesse of Eritrea is sneaking in sharing Ethiopian athletic medals these days. First time I saw his name on a race board, I actually thought he was Ethiopian. Tadesse is a typical name in Ethiopia, almost like John in America. And Zersenay is the name of the famous Ethiopian Scientist who discovered "Selam",  “the oldest known skeleton of hominid child”.   So it took people like me a long time to finally realize that Zersenay Tadesse is actually NOT Ethiopian!  Anyway, he is starting to share the spotlight from Ethiopian runners. Even though Kenenisa was sick that day in Kenya and the swarming heat made most runners stop, Zersenay even defeated our hero Kenenisa Bekele at the cross country championships. That is a big accomplishment, no matter what the circumstances. We saw that Kenenisa is human after all, and Kenenisa not getting his sixth Gold medal in world cross country that day in Kenya made some Ethiopians very mad, while many others didn’t care. But if I was the manager of Ethiopian athletics team, I would take these threats from Eritrea very seriously. Zersenay can single handedly replace the Kenyans as our biggest challenge in the long distance men’s competitions in the future. Ofcourse as a nation, Ethiopia has walking legends like Terunesh Dibaba, Meseret Defar, Haile and some new comers like Tariku. Most of these have already won more than ten Gold medals, and have already set so many world records so the Eritrean Zeresenay winning just one or two gold medals makes only a small dent in Ethiopian dominance.
 

But, there are some big problems for Ethiopia ahead. For example, Haile will soon retire and Kenenisa is more focused on shorter 3k, 5k and 10k races, which forces only our third & fourth best runners in the marathons to challenge Zersenay. So Ethiopia needs new strategy to bring our number one runners to the marathons and the cross country races. One way would be persuading the new comers like Tariku bekele to focus more on the longer distance and marathons, instead of adding more to the shorter races. What is best for Ethiopia? Getting Gold & Bronze medals in each men's 3k, 5k and 10k races OR getting  Gold medals in ALL 3k, 5k 10k, half marathon and marathon etc?? Most people would prefer the second option.

 

Career wise, it is important to have athletes that specialize, Full time, in each event for the Ethiopian national team.  Only at age 21, Tariku already has a Gold in the IAAF world athletics, but that was  for 3000 metres. As a national team manager, one should probably move Tariku and Abreham Feleke to longer races, so that Kenenisa doesn’t have to be fatigued doing more than three events at the same time. 
 


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Addis is an Ethiopian blogger living in America and can be reached by ethiom842@ yahoo.com