Haile Gebrselassie broke the marathon world record in Berlin on Sunday (Sept 28,08), posting an official time of two hours, four minutes and 26 seconds.
The 34-year-old Ethiopian beat the mark of 2:04:55 set by Kenya's Paul Tergat in Berlin in September 2003. Gebrselassie was already 32 seconds inside Tergat's pace at the 10km mark and went through halfway at 62.29.
"This is wonderful, really special," said Gebrselassie, who missed the record by 61 seconds in the 2006 race.
The mild weather conditions were almost ideal, with overcast skies for most of the race.
"Today it was perfect," he added. "It was a little bit windy, but perfect. The spectators were great and gave me great support."
The fast, flat course wound through nine districts of the German capital with a total inclination of just 30m.
Last year, Gebrselassie had faded in the final six kilometres in the face of a stiff headwind but this year the race organisers made sure there were enough pacesetters to take him through the 30km point.
Gebrselassie won four successive world titles and over 10,000m and set numerous world records on the track before turning to road racing late in his career.
Gete Wami of Ethiopia won the women's race in a time of 2:23.17.
The popular Ethiopian singer Teddy Afro is currently in kality prison accused of a hit and run accident. After a little over a week of back and forth, the "court" ruled against Teddy's release on bail. Click here to read Ethiopian Reporter's report on the court darama.
ethiozagol's initial post on the issue.
Birtukan Mideksa reaffirms her party's strong stand infavor of peacful struggle. Her letter seems a response to Ato andargachew's recent article.
Click here to read his interview.
Kinijit changed its name yesterday to Unity for Democracy and Justice Party (UDJP).Its to be recalled that EPRDF decided to give the name and logo of CUD (kinijit) to Ayele Chamiso.
Engineerr Hailu has reportedly pulled out from a radio interview he was booked to discuss "the complex politics of Ethiopia." The reason, as explained later by his representative, Dr. taye, was "he didn't want to discuss the party's internal issues on the show-which was not the purpose of the interview to begin with.But the show host said the engineer pulled out because he didnt want to appear on the same station Berhanu is on-even berhanu was scheduled to appear on a different segment via telephone.How absurd is that!!!!
Oops, He Did It Again!!!
Yeah, it was Dr Berhanu and his group that was the target of Ato Bedru's venomous attack since september 2007. But now Eng. Hailu is also included in his attack list.Just months ago, he was on various diaspora media outlets and townhall meetings trying to convince audiences how GREAT Eng. Hailu is-listen to this and this-( and, ofcourse, how evil Dr berhanu and his group are). Those days are gone now, friends. These time he attacks kinijit (the party) in general and Ato Hailu and Dr Taye in particular. Read it here for yourself.
Dr berhanu asks some thought provoking questions. Read here and discuss it.
The discussion in and around the opposition camp has been on trivial matters for too long. Saddly enough, we haven't heard as much on issues that really matter in moving the struggle forward.Recently we came across a really interseting writing by Andargachew Tsige that is monumental in steering the discussion in the direction we all need to head. We need our elits to do some thinking and pitch in their ideas.
click here to read Ato Andargachew's article.
Engineer Hailu's interview with Netsanet Le-Ethiopia-forward to 7 min.
We wish our ethiopian christian brothers and sisters a happy christmass.