Why Kenenisa Bekele Deserves an Olympic Send-Off
When a 22-year-old Kenenisa Bekele stood atop his first Olympic podium in 2004 after winning the men’s 10,000m in Athens, he wasn’t what you’d call bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. After all, the man was already an eight-time world champion, and that included the global 10,000m title from Paris the year prior.
What none could have predicted at the time was that this young man would make a bid to return to the French capital two decades later – after a 12-year hiatus from the Olympics – to take on the marathon.
Last week, Bekele finished second at the London Marathon in 2:04:15. It was the last race before the Ethiopian Athletics Federation (EAF) picks their team for the Paris Olympics, and Bekele has made a very convincing case for why he should be on that team.
In this piece, I’m going to break down why I think Bekele, who will be 42 when the Olympics roll around, should be on that start line in Paris.
While the EAF hasn’t announced anything yet, it’s safe to assume that Sisay Lemma will be on the team. Lemma won the Valencia Marathon last December in 2:01:48 and took a very convincing win at the Boston Marathon earlier this month. Ethiopia therefore has two spots left, which they will realistically fill with two of the following four athletes: Bekele, Tamirat Tola, Dawit Wolde, and Deresa Geleta.
Wolde is an interesting character who had a good shot at making the Olympic team heading into London. After beating Bekele in Valencia last year in 2:03:48, a strong showing at the London Marathon would have demonstrated to the EAF that he can perform consistently over the marathon distance. Unfortunately, Wolde, who seems to be half-hearting his marathon career, failed to finish in the English capital. If you ignore his impressive result from Valencia last December, Wolde’s 2022-23 season consisted of two DNFs, a fourth-place finish at the Rotterdam Marathon, a 17th-place finish at the Chicago Marathon, and a handful of unsuccessful track races as short as 1500m. Wolde has made two Olympic teams in his career, but it doesn’t look like he’ll be making his third this year.
Tola could go either way. Despite not finishing in London, and his only other result from this year being a 7th-place finish at the RAK Half Marathon in February, I still think he’ll make the team. He won the New York Marathon in course record time last November and is the 2022 world marathon champion. He is a former Olympic medallist, and when he does reach the finish line of a marathon, he makes the podium more than half of the time.
Geleta is the only other man who could take a spot from Bekele. The 28-year-old won the Seville Marathon in February in a very impressive 2:03:27, although there’s some controversy surrounding the legitimacy of that time. Of the top 17 finishers, 16 ran personal bests, with the average improvement being almost two minutes! Is Geleta’s 2:03:27 in Seville in seemingly perfect conditions worth more than Bekele’s 2:04:15 in terrible conditions? I wouldn’t say so. What’s more, Geleta has never run a World Marathon Major, and he’s only gone under 2:07 twice in his career, whereas Bekele has dipped under that mark on ten occasions. But, the EAF has a history of not considering the whole picture, especially when it comes to leaving Bekele off of Olympic teams (which could work out well for Geleta).
Geleta wins the 2024 Seville Marathon
In 2016, Bekele had a decent case for selection. He had a strong Olympic record, having raced five times across three Games and coming home with three golds, a silver, and a fourth, and he had quickly developed into a promising marathon runner. In 2014, he won his debut at the Paris Marathon and just missed the podium in Chicago later that year. An Achilles injury forced him out of the 2015 Dubai Marathon, but when he arrived in England ahead of the 2016 London Marathon, he assured the world that he would be ready when it came time to go to the Olympics. Despite not yet being at full health, he made the podium in London that year.
Ultimately, he needn’t have worried about being prepared for the Olympics. In a strange move, Bekele was left off the team in favour of Tesfaye Abera, who had never run a World Marathon Major and had an average marathon time outside 2:09. Needless to say, Abera found himself out of his depth at the Olympics and ended up dropping out of the race.
“I’m deeply disappointed and sad. The federation set criteria they knew very well would rule me out,” explained Bekele after it was revealed that he wouldn’t be going to Rio.
“I finished third in the London Marathon when I was far from 100 percent fit. I’d done my preparation in full. Everyone knows that London is the toughest marathon except the people from the federation. There is a group there that know nothing about athletics.”
Bekele proved his point a few months later, running within six seconds of the marathon world record in Berlin.
Bekele wins the 2016 Berlin Marathon by running the second fastest time in history
2021 was even worse. Because Ethiopia has so many athletes under the Olympic qualifying standard from which they can choose, they don’t hold trials, instead letting the performances of their top runners speak for themselves. But, in the build-up to the Tokyo Olympics, they panicked, perhaps fearing the COVID-19 pandemic would not leave enough international races to inform their decision. They threw together a 35km course at an elevation of more than 2000m that winded its way through trails and main roads around Addis Ababa and announced that whoever made the podium would be going to Tokyo. Bekele wrote a widely supported open letter to the EAF explaining why this was a bad idea and told the federation that he would not be racing at the trials as they were too close to the Olympics. Bekele probably thought they would still pick him – he hadn’t lost a race in the three years prior to those trials, and that included a 2:01:41 win in Berlin that put him within two seconds of the marathon world record and set a national record that is still standing. However, the EAF held true to their word, and Bekele was snubbed once again. All three men who were picked dropped out of the race at the Olympics.
Bekele is universally considered to be the greatest distance runner of all time, has twice won Ethiopian Person of the Year, and has reinvested a lot of his winnings back into the local economy, building hotels, housing, and track and field facilities around the country. But, for reasons unbeknownst to me, the EAF seems to constantly butt heads with him.
Hopefully they can put their differences aside this year because Bekele is, once again, deserving of an Olympic spot. He just finished second in the world’s most competitive marathon: London has the biggest elite budget and Bekele beat everyone save for one man not from his country, and by front running no less. Couple that with his patient run in Valencia last year, where he used his experience to move from running solo in 12th at halfway to finishing fourth in a new master’s world record, and he becomes an obvious pick. He’s the only Ethiopian to have broken 2:05 in 2023 and 2024, and in what is only a slightly useless piece of trivia, his average finish time for his last three marathons is 90 seconds quicker than Eliud Kipchoge’s.
If it were up to me, I would be picking Lemma, Tola, and Bekele. Outside of Lemma (who is an obvious choice), Tola has the most experience when it comes to winning championship marathons, and Bekele has been the most consistent Ethiopian of the past 18 months. Last year, when Bekele left Nike to sign with Anta and announced that he was aiming to make one last Olympic team before he retired, it’s fair to say very few people believed he could pull it off. Now, it seems as though it’s an inevitability.