Kenenisa Bekele: how soon will he totally annihilate the distance WR's?

10 May 2007- Ethiopia’s double world 10000m champion Kenenisa Bekele will attempt a world best over two miles at the FBK-Double Mile on May 24th 2007 in Hengelo, Netherlands.

The 24-year old, who has not competed since dropping out of the senior men’s 12km race at the 35th IAAF World Cross Country Championships, will have his eyes on Kenyan Daniel Komen’s mark of 7:58.61, the only sub 8-minute clocking for the distance. If he fails in his bid to improve a world best, Bekele might also fancy attacking Haile Gebrselassie’s national best time and one-time world best mark of 8:01.08.

“I’ve got a close connection with that event, also because my manager Jos Hermens is co-organizer,” Bekele said on the event’s official website. “Besides that it is a quick circuit and the conditions are good, so it is worth trying it in Hengelo. I realize that it won’t be easy to improve the record. I will only succeed if I am in a top shape and when the conditions are great. Daniels time is very sharp.”

Kenya: Kenenisa Fails to Recover From Mombasa

The Nation (Nairobi)

20 May 2007

Posted to the web 21 May 2007

Elias Makori

Addis Ababa

Has the world seen the last of Kenenisa Bekele's powerful running in the middle and long distance races? Is this the end of an era?

A couple of months ago, these would hardly have been questions to ask. I for one could never have imagined that the stocky Kenenisa could blow his turbo so soon before the World Championships in Osaka this summer, or next year's Olympics in Beijing.

But on Friday evening, the Olympic and world champion made a startling revelation: that he has never recovered from the disastrous 12-kilometre race at the 35th World Cross Country Championships in Mombasa in March, leading to the big question of whether or not we have seen the last of Ethiopia's "pocket rocket."

In an interview at one of his residences near the embassy of Gabon in Addis Ababa, Kenenisa almost broke into tears as he narrated how he has unsuccessfully tried to pull himself together since falling off in the last lap of the Mombasa race and losing his world title to Eritrean rival, Zersanay Tadesse.

LOSS OF FORM

Kenenisa is so off-form that he even doubts his chances of competing at the World Championships in Osaka in August. He has ruled out an assault on the 10,000m and 5,000m double in the Japan meet should he miraculously bounce back.

So low was his morale that as this interview dragged into his 4pm training time, he sat on, pensively, without any sense of urgency. Instead, it was his brother, Tariku, who begged to leave on time for the afternoon run on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, perhaps with an increasing awareness that sooner rather than later the weight of an expectant nation will shift from Kenenisa's hitherto strong shoulders onto his young, inexperienced ones.

The Sunday Nation also spoke to Kenenisa's father, 82-year-old Bekele Bayicha, brother Tariku, coach Woldemeskel Kostre and his distance running mentor, Haile Gebrselassie. And all of them were at a loss of words over Bekele's sudden loss of form.

BAD DREAM

Not even frequent trips to the doctor have revealed the source of Kenenisa's loss of the power that endeared him to many fans and made him the athlete to beat in distance running.

As he spoke on Friday evening, everyone around him, including his brother Tariku and his house helps, fought off tears. The story did not seem real. It was like a bad dream.

A combination of the Kenyan coast's heat and humidity, a bad game plan on his part, knee injury and lack of a lap counter at the Mombasa Golf Course all contributed to the fall of one of the world's greatest athletes ever.

Throughout the interview on Friday, six words he uttered stood out and summed up his feelings: "I have no power any more."

Kenenisa's training plans have never been able to get off the ground since the Mombasa championships, and the man from Bekoji in the Oromiya region, Ethiopia's athletics breadbasket, is devastated.

"After Mombasa, my leg muscles felt like they were arm muscles," Kenenisa told his sad tale.

"I felt dizzy, and two weeks later I had pain in my knee. I did not know that when I was running in Mombasa I hurt my knee. I have gone to see many doctors and they say it was a muscle tissue injury, which will get better through massage.

"I have seen many doctors but they all tell me that I'm not ill. But I feel I have no power any more.

"Previously, for example, I was able to lift this table (coffee table in his living room) but now I struggle to do this. I have no power any more?

"When I do hard training sometimes I have this pain in my head which I cannot resist? I don't have power in my body any more?. sometimes I train well one day and the next day I cannot train well? I need time to recover."

It was at this point of the interview that the room fell silent as Kenenisa almost broke down in tears.

But he came around and pointed out that his physical condition was so bad that he would have to drastically scale down his international competitions.

"Normally, I run 16 competitions a year but this year I think I will run only five," he said. "After the World Championships (in Osaka) I will probably run only three."

He will be only 25 on June 13, but Kenenisa's international resume reads as though he has been in top flight athletics for the last 20 years.

(con't)

Kenya: Kenenisa Fails to Recover From Mombasa

(Page 2 of 2)

Sample this: 2001 world junior cross country champion; 2001 world short course cross country silver medallist; 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 double world short and long course cross country champion; 1999 world youth 3,000m silver medalist; 2000 world junior 5,000m bronze medalist; 2003,2005 world 10,000m champion; 2003 world championships 5,000m silver medalist and 2003 All Africa Games 5,000m champion.

The list goes on: 2004 Olympic 10,000m champion; 2004 Olympic 5,000m silver medalist; 2006 world indoor 3,000m champion and 2006 African 5,000m champion.

Before the World Cross Country Championships in Mombasa, Kenenisa, who runs for the Muger Cement Club in Addis Ababa and is managed by Dutchman Jos Hermens, had not lost a cross country race since December 2001.

Could his sudden loss of form be a burnout, a result of running too fast too soon?

He doesn't think so: "My schedule in the last four or five years has not changed. Moreover, this is only the beginning of the 2007 season. After a break from 2006, how can I lose power at this time?"

However, the soft-spoken king of distance running said he was happy with the Kenyan crowd at the Mombasa championships, but observed that the lack of a lap counter in the 12km race was partly to blame for his loss to Eritrea's Zersanay Tadesse.

"There was no lap counter, it was too hot and the opposition was strong. With such weather and conditions, how did they (organisers) expect us to know the number of laps without a lap counter," he wondered.

"After finishing four laps, I thought I was going for the final lap only to be told at the bell that there was one more lap! I could not control my body any more and I could not afford another kick to the finish and that's why I dropped off with a few metres to go - I just could not control my body.

"But I was happy with the Kenyans. Wherever I went, in the hotel and everywhere else, they were happy to see me and said I had added value to the championships by coming.

"I love the Kenyan people but I was not happy with the radio announcements and some internet articles that said I was a bad loser in Mombasa. I always try my best to compete. Sport is not only about winning and I will always respect the Kenyan people," he said.

Like his brother, Tariku also did not finish the 12km race in Mombasa due to the heat and humidity.

"We have never seen conditions like this before," Tariku said. "It was too hot and I could not finish the race."

"But although I dropped out in the early laps, I could not believe my eyes when Kenenisa dropped out? I have no words to say how I felt? the course was also very hard, it was like running on a motor racing track!"

Kenenisa and Tariku's father, Bayicha Bekele, lives with his third wife, mother of the two stars, in Bekoji town, some 200 kilometres outside Addis Ababa in a house Kenenisa built for him.

When the Sunday Nation caught up with him midweek, he read malice in the decision to have the World Cross Country Championships in Mombasa. A deliberate ploy to have his son dethroned.

"The weather was terrible! I could not believe my son dropped out of the race," he said. "I think having the race under such conditions was deliberate. But its God's will and God sees everything."

RECOVERY

Woldemeskel Kostre, Ethiopia's award-winning coach of the middle and long distance races, was also unable to explain what happened in Mombasa.

But what has shocked him most is the fact that Bekele has never recovered. "He needs support to get his form back. But from the way I see it, it will take time."

The sentiments are shared by Haile Gebrselassie, arguably the world's best ever long distance runner.

"Kenenisa learnt a lot from me and I have also learnt a lot from him. What happened in Mombasa was unbelievable. But I'm sure he will be back," Gebrselassie said in his eighth floor office of the eight storey Alem Building that he built from his track earnings and named after his wife.

He added: "Kenenisa has achieved a lot. But sometimes when you grow older you lose speed and when the youngsters come up, it is difficult to challenge them."

The exact extent of Kenenisa's loss of form and power will be clearer in 10 days' time when he competes in the 3,000 metres, his first race of the track season, in Hengelo, The Netherlands, at a meeting organised by his manager Hermens.

Maybe only then will the world know whether this is really the beginning of the end of Kenenisa Bekele's illustrious running career.

But as it stands, Kenenisa is not the same "pocket rocket" that the world knew. His turbo seems to have blown.

Done...I don't think so a hard road to return to his awesome form, MAYBE!

THALES FBK-Games - Hengelo (NED)

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Official Result

Men - Two Miles

Pos Athlete Nat Mark Pts

1 Bekele Kenenisa ETH 8:13.51

2 Soi Edwin Cheruiyot KEN 8:16.98

3 Cheruiyot Jonas KEN 8:18.02

4 Ebuya Joseph KEN 8:18.33

5 Ndiwa Remmy Limo KEN 8:18.70

6 Menjo Kiprono KEN 8:18.96

7 Maataoui Ali MAR 8:19.33

8 Kosgei Shadrack KEN 8:20.83

9 Komon Leonard Patrick KEN 8:22.56

10 Chebii Abraham KEN 8:24.58

11 Kipkorir Edwin KEN 8:28.46

12 Wendimu Mulugeta ETH 8:31.43

13 Shabunin Vyacheslav RUS 8:43.80

Bene Barnabás HUN DNF

Kemboi Nicholas KEN DNF

Kipsang Churchill KEN DNF

Maybe this will shut the Kenyans' mouth. He beat an almost whole field of Kenyans - regardless of what they write about him in the papers or how they come prepared for him.

KENENISA BEKELE:

After ‘depressing’ Mombasa, Bekele looks ahead to Osaka title defence

Monday 4 June 2007

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - Will we ever see the best again of Kenenisa Bekele, World and Olympic 10,000m champion, after his shock exit from the 12km race at the World Cross Country Championships in Mombasa last March?

It is a question that even the great man has asked himself time and again as he recovers from his forgettable experience in Kenya’s coastal city.

“When I watch the tapes of the race, I am caught in two minds,” he said speaking nearly two months after his impressive winning streak over the mud came to an end in the most unexpected of circumstances.

“A part of me thinks that maybe I could have run differently that day. But I did not commit a crime by dropping out. I tried all I can, but it simply was not possible for me to continue. I know it is a one-time thing. I am not a loser, but as a sportsman, I have accepted that I cannot always win either.”

Difficult recovery

Although Bekele has the humility of accepting what transpired at the Nyali Golf course on March 24, his road back ‘to the Kenenisa of old’ has not been easy.

“My performance has come under a lot of scrutiny,” he says referring to the massive media attention that followed the Ethiopian team’s below-par performance in Mombasa. “But it really does not help anyone to dwell on the same issue again and again. What has happened has happened. I know that I cannot go back and change the way things happened. What I can do is learn from the experience.”

Limited racing

If Bekele’s plans for the rest of the season go accordingly, then he expects to have a limited racing programme of selected races all geared towards a World 10,000m title defence at the 11th IAAF World Championships in Osaka, Japan (25 August – 2 September 2007).

“I am training very well and returning back to normal condition,” he says “I do not want to run as much as I did last year.”

In 2006, Bekele paid dearly for a crowded racing programme in the outdoor season that constituted of thirteen races. Although he won a small share of the IAAF Golden League Jackpot (USD 83,333) and a first ever African 5000m title, he also lost four times in Oslo, London (Crystal Palace), Athens, and Shanghai.

“That will not happen this year,” he says. “I will run maybe three or four races before Osaka. I also plan to attempt my own World 5000m record.”

Two-mile debut in Hengelo

Bekele opened his outdoor track campaign with a victory over Two Miles at the IAAF World Athletics Tour meeting in Hengelo on 26 May. Yet his was a slow run victory in which his famous sprint was put into good use with 275m to go. His result 8:13.51 was also someway below his personal best for this seldom run distance, of 8:05.12, which he ran indoors in 2006.

Only 10,000m in Osaka

But Bekele’s main focus of the season will be Osaka, where he hopes to complete a hat-trick of world championship titles over the 10000m. “I am not thinking of doubling this year,” he says. “It would be too much to double.”

A third World title will see him move closer to mentor Haile Gebrselassie’s record of four successive 10,000m wins between 1993 and 1999. “I am not thinking a lot about that at the moment,” he says. “It would be an honour to emulate Haile in that regard, but my priority now is to recover from Mombassa.”

Following Haile’s investment in construction projects

While he again wishes away comparisons with ‘the Emperor’ on the track, Bekele looks to be following in the footsteps of the former two-time Olympic 10,000m champion by investing in construction projects.

Bekele is fast-building an impressive collection in the Ethiopian real-state bonanza. He is currently constructing a four-storey multi-purpose building in Assela (Gebrselassie’s birth city and 220kms southeast of Addis Ababa) and Adama (capital of the Oromiya region that includes his birth town Bekoji), while he is also a share holder in a soon-to-be-operation college in Addis Ababa.

In addition to general purpose buildings, Bekele also owns three houses and has received a large plot of land to construct a fourth.

Charitable giving

But is everything that the young man earns reinvested back into his businesses?

“No, I do give a lot away to helping people,” he reiterates. “For instances, I donated ETB 70,000 (USD 7800) to help flood victims last year. I also attend lots of charity events for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).”

Lots of hobbies

When he is not training, competing, or operating his business from one of Addis Ababa’s high-rise buildings, Bekele says he uses much of his spare time educating himself.

“I love reading books, especially biographies,” he says. “My favourite is David Beckham’s biography My Life. I also love reading books of management and leadership.

If he can squeeze it into his daily routine, Bekele also watched movies and listening to music. “I love Mr. Bean, but my favourite movie is the Last King of Scotland,” he says. “Of the musicians, I admire Teddy Afro (Ethiopian singer, whose hit song ‘history is made’ focuses on Bekele’s Olympic 10,000m victory and contains the lyrics Kenenisa Anbessa or Kenenisa lion), not because he sang a song about me. I admire his creativity.”

And when he gets the rare opportunity, Bekele admits that he can also show his moves on the dance floor. “I am not a particularly good dancer, but when I am invited to ceremonies and get the chance, I do not shy away.”

I will admit I thought and still think Kenenisa will have a harder time this year than he has previous years on the track- after his disappointing World X Championships. A big question will certainly be answered with resounding clarity after his 2mile match-up with Craig Mottram and company!

How much lower does he think he can take the 5000m WR- it's already close to 4 minute mile for 3.1 miles?

Pre's Classic 2 MILE Field

Kenenisa Bekele (Ethiopia)

Craig Mottram (Australia)

Ben Limo (Kenya)

Zersenay Tadesse (Eritrea)

Adam Goucher

Matt Tegenkamp

Sileshi Sihine (Ethiopia)

Jonas Cheruiyot (Kenya)

Boniface Songok (Kenya)

Abrehem Feleke (Ethiopia)

Sean Graham

Anthony Famiglietti

Juan Barrios (Mexico)

Dathan Ritzenhein

Vipam, he may not break the 5,000 WR but he will trounce the competition easily.

The speed and the endurance are there

What is Bekele going to run in the Pre 2 miler?? I say 8:02 for the easy victory.

You're a moron if you think he goes over 7:57. He's been snowing everyone, and is going to bust a huge one to get a boost in popularity in North America.

googlerific wrote:

What is Bekele going to run in the Pre 2 miler?? I say 8:02 for the easy victory.

You are both morons. He isn't running at Pre.

Where is he the king?

i heard, he married (unoffical one) an ethiopian journalist

i am happy kenenisa will return in 15 july and

mottram will put his tail in between his clumsy legs

Sheffield, UK – Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele, the World record holder for 5000m and 10,000m will be racing against Australia’s Craig Mottram on Sunday 15 July in Sheffield’s Don Valley stadium at the Norwich Union British Grand Prix, a Grand Prix status meeting as part of the IAAF World Athletics Tour 2007.

Kenenisa returns and finally does what he could have done years ago- break the sub 7:30 3000m barrier. His runaway victory against Craig Mottram makes currently the 7th fastest 3000m man ever.

Norwich Union British Grand Prix - Sheffield (GBR)

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Official Result

Men - 3000 Metres

Pos Athlete Nat Mark Pts

1..Bekele Kenenisa ETH 7:26.69

2..Mottram Craig AUS 7:35.00

3..Solinsky Chris USA 7:36.90

4..Ritzenhein Dathan USA 7:39.03

5..Kipkorir Edwin KEN 7:40.88

6..Farah Mohammed GBR 7:42.83

7..Dobson Ian USA 7:48.03

8..Chebii Abraham KEN 7:53.64

9..Slattery Steve USA 8:01.15

10.Mays Jermaine GBR 8:05.87

11.Silva Rui Pedro POR 8:07.19

12.Summerside Seth USA 8:08.83

Bett Charles Kiplangat KEN DNF

Kosgei Shadrack KEN DNF

what would Teg have run in this race?

7:32?

Rumor in Addis Abeba was that he was chasing models and hanging out with a bad crowd. One of is supposedly a heavy drinker and a playboy.

Oh well. I don't know what the truth is ... but sometimes these things are true.

that's very high on the all-time 3k list! A huge run, with a crazy fast last 1200. This show's the man is back and very fit. No need to worry. He is still the greatest right now!