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Story by ELIAS MAKORI - Nation Media
07 July, 2007
A lot of stories have been told about Tirunesh Dibaba’s early life, but two truly stand out as most memorable.
In 2001, she was almost late for her maiden appearance at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Ostende, Belgium.
Aged 16, it was her first trip outside Ethiopia and it came shortly after her arrival in the city of Addis Ababa from her rural birthplace of Bekoji, some 280 kilometres south east of the Ethiopian capital.
“When they announced that the race was going to start at 9 am, I thought it was 9 O’clock Ethiopian time in the afternoon (translates to 3 pm), and I decided to sleep,” she once told Ethiopia’s leading athletics writer, Elshadai Negash, currently the press chief of the Ethiopian Athletics Federation.
“One of the coaches burst into my room to wake me shouting that my race was just minutes away,” Tirunesh recounted.
She eventually made it to the start and finished a commendable fifth after hardly having warmed up for the race and wearing big shorts that she had picked from a senior athlete’s closet in the hurry to make it to the start.
Then there was the story of an earlier incident in which Tirunesh arrived in Addis from Bekoji to live with her cousin, Bekelu, and continue her high school education, only to be told she had shown up six days after the school registration deadline.
Marrying at young age
“I was heartbroken? Bekelu tried all she could but there was no hope for me. I could not go back to Bekoji because I could have ended up marrying at a young age and not fulfilling by athletics dream.”
Bekelu then helped Tirunesh to enrol in the Prisons Police Sports Club at the tender age of 14, and things have looked up for the rural girl ever since.
Tirunesh is the fourth born in a family of seven children, the eldest, Bekelu Dibaba, currently residing in Belgium and the second, Chala, living with his mother, Gutu Tola and father Dibaba Keneni, in Bekoji.
Their cousin, Derartu Tulu, was the first Sub-Saharan woman to win gold on the Olympic track which she did in the 10,000m at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and again at the Sydney Games in 2000.
Tirunesh’s elder sister, Ejegayehu, 25, is an established athlete in her own right, having won bronze medals in the 5,000m and 10,000m at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki. Their younger sibling, Genzebe, 16, is also one to watch. She represented Ethiopia at last March’s IAAF World Cross Country Championships’ juniors’ race in Mombasa and finished fifth in 21:23, just 31 seconds behind Kenyan winner Linet Barasa Chepkwemoi.
Ejegayehu is enrolled with the Oromiya Police Club while Genzabe runs for Muger Cement, the same club that has in its fold superstar Kenenisa Bekele.
Tirunesh is by far the best known family member, bursting into prominence in her best year as an athlete so far, 2005. It was in this year that she won a double in the long and short course races at the 33rd IAAF World Cross Country Championships in St Etienne/St Galmier, France, before moving over to the track to complete another double over the 5,000m and 10,000m at the World Championships in Helsinki.
Also in 2005, Tirunesh broke the world indoor 5,000m record in Boston before grabbing another world best over five kilometres in Carlsbad, US. Between 2004 and 2005, Tirunesh was the highest paid Ethiopian athlete having earned close to $100,000, which was not too bad for a 19-year-old village girl.
Like her track rival Meseret Defar, Tirunesh has not yet ventured into big business or real estate. Instead, she invested her initial earnings in the family, building a mansion for her parents in Bekoji and also purchasing a $500,000 (Sh35 million) residence in Addis Ababa where she lives with her siblings and fiancé, another top Ethiopian distance runner, Sileshi Sihine, the All Africa Games defending 10,000 metres champion.
Unlike Meseret, Tirunesh did not get any opposition from her parents when she exhibited great desire in athletics. “Perhaps it’s because my parents had seen the successes of our cousin, Derartu, and other top athletes from our region like Kenenisa Bekele and Haile Gebrselassie,” Tirunesh says in her compound, where she has parked her five-litre BMW 750 next to boyfriend Sileshi’s Toyota Prado.
“I did not want her to get married young,” Tirunesh’s mother had told us in Bekoji where the star athlete spent her early education at the Bekoji Elementary School, which is also Kenenisa Bekele’s alma mater. “I wanted her to study and get a job. I never object to my children’s desires and when she took up athletics, I did not object.”
Tirunesh is shy, reserved and hardly media savvy. She loves her space, which is quite evident in her expensively furnished but spacious living room. That’s why she would not budge when asked about her game plan for the 2007 track season after failing to retain her world cross title, finishing second to Kenya-born Dutchwoman Lornah Kiplagat in Mombasa.
“I just want to be at my best and win gold at the World Championships in Osaka,” was all she could offer. The Mombasa competition was the most demanding of her career. “It damaged the whole Ethiopian team but we are recovering well for the track season now.”
Like Meseret, Tirunesh and her sisters, along with Sihine, have morning and evening training sessions and also report to the National Stadium in Addis Ababa for regular track splits under veteran distance running coach Woldemeskel Kostre.
Tirunesh’s tense relationship with Meseret, her biggest track rival, reached its climax at the final 5,000m race of last year’s Golden League in Brussels, where Tirunesh needed to win to grab a share of the $1 million jackpot on offer for athletes completing a six-race sweep in their Golden League Series specialities.
But Meseret had other ideas, breasting the tape ahead of her compatriot and denying her a clean sweep and over Sh1 million in income.
“I lost a lot of money,” Tirunesh recalls, the bitterness evidently still showing. “At that time I was very angry but now I think nothing of it. We both went there to win and she had every right to win too.”
Meseret will not be there when Tirunesh runs at the Meeting Gaz de France in Paris Saint-Denis tonight, the second of this year’s six Golden League competitions.
The pair’s next big duel will now most probably be at the world championships
in Osaka next month.