Quest blogger / Olympics

In light of the up-coming Olympic Games in Beijing, I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you some great thoughts from a friend and client, Barry Shepley.

Barry will be doing television work during the games, and was on-hand as the Team Canada Triathlon Coach at the 2000 Sydney Games. Subscribe to his weekly emails so you don't miss anything! barrie@personalbest.ca

From mud huts to African mansions

One of my fond memories of the Sydney Olympics was meeting the world's greatest distance runner, Ethiopia's Haile Gebrselassie. He saw my Canadian jacket in Sydney and asked me if I knew Ethiopia's previous great runner from the 80s, Miruts Yifter (5000m and 10,000m gold medalist from the 1980 Russian Olympic Games).

Yifter had left Ethiopia in the early 90s and was living in Toronto. Ironically not only did I know Yifter, but had him to a few functions and track running sessions with my athletes. Gebrselassie was so excited that I knew his personal idol that he asked me to have a picture taken of the two of us and to give it to Yifter when I returned to Canada. It remains one of my favourite pictures of the Sydney Games.

Haile Gebrselassie wasn't born with any benefits. He lived in a mud hut with no electricity and eight brothers and sisters. Without shoes, young Haile would run 10km to school in the morning and 10km back home through the trails and high altitude thin air. As a young runner, Haile started to win running races in 1987 and was picked up by the great Ethiopian running coach Dr. Yilma Berta. Gebrselassie's break through was his gold medal in the 10,000m track race at the Atlanta Olympics. Haile returned home from the Games to marry his life-long sweetheart and start their lives of making a difference to others.

Haile and his wife fund an orphanage but, rather then just giving people money, he believes in giving them education and helping them realize their dreams. "I don't want to just give them fish, I want to teach them how to fish." says Gebrsellasie of the philosophy they use at their orphanage. Haile backed up his Atlanta gold-medal with another gold in Sydney 2000. Over the years he has set 20+ world records around the world. Of all the world records that Gebrselassie has achieved, the one he is most proud of is the World Record in the marathon set in the last year. By 29 seconds, the man who ran in his bare feet as a child and grew up without electricity, set the fastest time ever produced in 2 hrs 04 minutes 26 seconds on the streets of Berlin.

The recent biopic of his life showed how he still runs with a very tight left arm. This is the arm that would hold his school books for the 20km of running to and from school for over a decade of his development years. With a huge concern about the impact of pollution on the lungs of athletes in Beijing, Gebrselassie has decided to not race in Beijing in August (hoping to get another chance at a future opportunity to break his own marathon record in the next 18 months). Like many of the athletes who have used their athletic prowess to help others, Ethiopia's Haile Gebrselassie continues to make a bigger impact off the track then he does on.

ed. note - when I was running fast and training like a madman, I joined the Yifter group on many occasions at Riverdale Park. It was intense, to say the least...what I learned most though was to have fun, be different and once the work was over, stop. None of this long cool-down crap.

Hard to disagree with "Yifter the shifter" as they called him, read more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miruts_Yifter

PD

peter@mynextrace.com