Historic Record Moments
As the meet organisers hastily prepared to hand over a second €25,000 world record bonus, the self-effacing Adere was unaware of the significance of her performance. It was the first sub-8:30 3000m run by a woman indoors. The first outdoors, 8:27.2, was achieved by Lyudmila Bragina of the Soviet Union, the 1972 Olympic 1500m champion, at College Pa
“God Did Not Permit”
For five years, she had been knocking on the door. She was 23 when she made the Ethiopian team for the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996, finishing 18th in the 10,000m final. The following year she made her World Athletics Championships debut in Athens, faring better than her celebrated compatriots in the 10,000m. While Deratu Tulu, the 1992 Olympic
Honing Her Kick with Haile
Even the breakthrough in Edmonton had a bittersweet taste. “My inexperience showed on the last lap,” Adere said. “I knew then that I had to work hard on my finishing kick. That’s what I have been doing in training.” Adere trained under the direction of Ethiopia’s national team coach Dr Wolde Kostre in a group that included Haile Gebrselassie, the t
Solo Stuttgart Run Smashes Szabo’s Record
She also claimed a second world indoor record – back on the Schleyer-Halle track in Stuttgart in January 2004. Having missed Szabo’s 5000m record of 14:47.35 by less than a second in Dortmund the previous year, she launched an all-out solo attack from 3km out and reduced it to smithereens, clocking 14:39.29. “I thought it was better to push hard fr