Haile Gebrselassie (Ge’ez: ኃይሌ ገብረ ሥላሴ, haylē gebre silassē; born April 18, 1973) is an Ethiopian long distance track and road running athlete. Known for his remarkable versatility, Gebrselassie achieved major competition wins at distances between 1500 metres and marathon, moving from outdoor, indoor and cross country running to road running in the latter part of his career. He has broken 25 world records and won numerous Olympic and World Championship titles, and is widely considered as one of the greatest distance runners in history. He currently holds the Marathon world record.
Gebrselassie was born as one of ten children in Asella, Arsi Province, Ethiopia. As a child growing up on a farm he used to run ten kilometres to school every morning, and the same back every evening. This led to a distinctive running posture, with his left arm crooked as if still holding his schoolbooks.[5]
Gebrselassie gained international recognition in 1992 when he won the 5,000-metre and 10,000-metre races at the 1992 junior World Championships in Seoul,[6] and a silver medal in the junior race at the World Cross Country Championships.
The next year, in 1993, Gebrselassie won the first of what would eventually be four consecutive world championships titles in the men’s 10,000 meters at the 1993, 1995, 1997, and 1999 World Championships. At the 1993 World Championships, he also ran in the 5,000-metre race to finish a close second behind Ismael Kirui of Kenya. In 1994 he won a bronze medal at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships. Later that year he set his first world record by running a 12:56.96 in the 5,000-metres, breaking Saïd Aouita’s record by two seconds.
In 1995, Gebrselassie ran the 10,000-metres in 26:43.53 in Hengelo, Netherlands lowering the world record by a full nine seconds. That same summer, in Zürich, Switzerland, Gebrselassie ran the 5000 metres in 12:44.39, ripping an astonishing 10.91 seconds off the world record 12:55.30 (established by Kenya’s Moses Kiptanui earlier in the year). This world record at the Weltklasse meet in Zürich was voted Performance of the Year by Track & Field News magazine. With this performance, Gebrselassie seemingly put the 5,000-meter record out of reach for quite a while, but the very next year Daniel Komen showed that this wasn’t the case. At the same Weltklasse meet in Zürich, an exhausted Gebrselassie, suffering from blisters obtained on the hard track in Atlanta (where he would win the Olympic 10,000 meter gold in 1996), had no answer to the 58-second lap of Daniel Komen with 5 laps to go as Komen went on to win and just miss Gebrselassie’s record, finishing in 12:45.09. In 1997, Gebrselassie turned the tables on Komen at the same meet. Coming off his third 10K world championship gold medal, Gebrselassie outkicked Komen in another Zürich classic on August 13, covering the final 200 meters in 26.8 seconds to break his 5,000-meter world record with a time of 12:41.86. Komen, in turn, took Gebrselassie’s record only nine days later when Komen ran a 12:39.74 performance in Belgium.
, Gebrselassie topped the polls when elected as a member of the IAAF Athletes Commission. Also in 2003, at the World Championships in Paris, Gebrselassie was involved in one of the most remarkable 10,000 meter races of all time while gaining a silver medal behind countryman and protégé Kenenisa Bekele. The last half of the 10,000 meter final at the championships was completed in a staggering 12:57.24 (12:57.2 for Bekele and 12:58.8 for Gebrselassie). According to the IAAF, “[n]ot only was this split the fastest closing 5,000 meters in the championships 10,000m (the previous record was 13:12.12, recorded in Atlanta), but it was also the fastest 5,000 meters in a global championships surpassing the 12:58.13 Salah Hissou recorded when he won the 5,000m in Sevilla’99.” (This remark remained true until a week later when the World Track & Field Championship 5,000 meter medalists (including Bekele) all ran faster than the second 5,000 meter split in the previous week’s 10,000 meters.) “The difference between the closing 5,000 meter splits (12:57.24) and the 5,000 meter World record (12:39.36) was 17.98 seconds, which is a record. The previous best of 18.4 seconds (13:31.4 for the closing 5,000 meters when the World Record was 13:13.0) was recorded in the 1976 Olympics.”
In 2004 Athens Olympics, Gebrselassie was seeking to become the first man in history to win three straight Olympic gold medals in the 10000 meter run. He was unable to do so, however, finishing fifth in a race won by his compatriot Kenenisa Bekele, who had broken both of Gebrselassie’s major track world records, the 5000 meter and the 10000 meter records. Shortly before the Athens games, Gebrselassie was unable to train for 3 weeks due to inflammation of his Achilles tendon. The injury was severe enough that he would not have competed otherwise, but did so because of significant pressure from his country. This loss of the final period of training likely cost him a medal.
