Wami'e eyes `Glued' on winning Olymnpics gold

Wami'e eyes `Glued' on winning Olymnpics gold
Phil Minshull

MADRID, FEBRUARY 8: Gete Wami, World cross-country champion and World 10,000 metres gold medallist, has to the best of her knowledge only one nickname. ``All the men she trains with call her Glue because she sticks to them closely when they are out running,'' said her husband Getaneh Tessema.

Despite the unlikely spectacle of the diminutive Wami matching compatriot and multiple World record-holder Haile Gebrselassie stride for stride, Tessema and Wami assured Reuters the story is essentially true.

``Okay, maybe not Haile, but I can stay with some of the others. Some of them are well-known names -- but I'm not going to tell you who they are because I don't want to embarrass them,'' Wami conceded, with Tessema translating for her from Amharic to English.

The Glue image is one that she carries over from the trails just outside the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa and into the international arena, as she sticks on the shoulder of whichever woman is at the front during her races.

Both of Wami'smajor successes last year came when she hung on to a brutally fast pace set by Paula Radcliffe, and then sprinted past the British woman in the final few hundred metres. Now Wami has ambitions of adding an Olympic 10,000 gold in Sydney to her collection.

She knows what it is like to have an Olympic medal around her neck, having finished third over the same 25 laps at the Atlanta Olympics four years ago. ``The Olympics are very special in Ethiopia because we were the first (independant) African country to win an Olympic gold,'' she said.

Abebe Bikila padded barefoot to victory in the Marathon at the 1960 Rome Olympics and his achievement is still revered, not only in Ethiopia but throughout Africa and the rest of the world.

``Even though I was not even born when he died (in 1973) he is still a very special person in Ethiopian history. He is still an inspirational figure for athletes from my country even in the 1990s.''

Wami also said she had no intention of changing her controversial race tactics inorder to appease critics, including Radcliffe and Kenya's Tegla Loroupe, the World championship silver and bronze medallists respectively in Seville last year.

``It's what works well for me and everybody is in a race to win,'' Wami said.

She will first defend her World cross-country title on March 18 in the Portuguese town of Vilamoura. Wami and Tessema, a former Ethiopian international runner who now has a Dutch passport, got married on November 21. ``I'm still a bit short of speed because of a delay in getting back into training after we got married,'' she commented.

``The wedding was a huge affair in Addis Ababa. More than 1,000 people came including many Ethiopian athletes. All the well-known names were there except Haile but he was having treatment in Europe on his Achilles Tendon,'' she said.

Wami is grateful that her talent has released her from a life even harder than all the effort she expends as a world-class runner. ``My family are farmers. My father still lives out in the country where hehas cattle. There is not doubt that I'd be working on the farm as well if I had not been a runner.''

``Running is tough at times but working on a farm in Ethiopia would have been far, far, tougher for me.'' (Reuters)