For much of the past year, the Ethiopian’s younger brother Tariku, the 2008 IAAF world indoor 3000 metres champion, was injured, leaving him to train alone. Even so, Bekele added to his medal collection at the world championships in Berlin, where he successfully completed the 5000m and 10,000m double.
Now the younger Bekele, 22, is fully fit again and keeping his big brother on his toes. “I don’t have a coach, I am coaching myself,” said the 27-year-old elder Bekele. “Tariku follows me and what I am doing.
“I am happy when I am training with him because I don’t want to train alone. I am not comfortable when I am training alone. I train on the hills outside Addis Ababa and it’s sometimes boring. I need somebody to help me and to train with me. Yes, he pushes me; he helps me.”
Bekele’s return to Edinburgh on Saturday marks his fifth visit to the capital, where he has won this race three times. More recently, he raced to victory at the 2008 world championships in the city, a win which served to reestablish his dominance on the turf. A year earlier a stomach ailment proved his undoing and he dropped out of the championships in Mombasa.
The reigning world cross country champion Gebre Gebremariam, also of Ethiopia, and Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge, the 2005 Great Edinburgh International winner, will provide competition on the nine kilometre race around Holyrood Park. Gebremariam has won his first three races on the IAAF cross country calendar, most recently on November 29 in Soria, Spain. That is clearly an advantage for the 25-year-old. But Bekele, at his finest, fears no man.
“Yes, it will be a hard race because this is my first race of the season,” Bekele conceded. “After the 2009 season I had a holiday and was resting.
“I had a break. So this is my first race and I don’t know how it will go. Normally the first race is difficult because I don’t know 100% if I am in good shape or not. When I am together with the other athletes I will know, during the race. It is a test race.”
Even a below-par Bekele is difficult to beat. And, if he likes Saturday’s outcome, Bekele will plot his season around the IAAF Diamond League meetings and seek improvements of his existing world 5000m and 10,000m records of 12:37.35 and 26:17.53 respectively. In the absence of a world athletics championships and summer Olympics in 2010, record assaults will serve as motivation.
“My dream is to break more records. Sometimes it will happen, sometimes not,” Bekele said. “Maybe I have good luck, maybe not good luck. It depends on weather conditions and sometimes the race goes differently to what I am expecting.
“Really, if I break one or two records that is my great motivation. I am getting older and time is not waiting for me.”
Between his twice-a-day training sessions, Bekele has his hands full. He and his wife, Ethiopian actress Danawit Gebregziabher, have two infant daughters and then there are his ever-expanding business interests, which have resulted from the wealth he’s amassed from distance running. “I am building a hotel in Addis Ababa and I have also started building an athletics camp around Addis,” he said. “I am very busy with these things.
“I have meetings between training sessions that I have to attend. I have to know how things are going. If I have time for myself it’s not that much. I enjoy being with my family. I stay with my kids and wife and we watch a movie, especially after the evening training.”
Although he is still at his peak, Bekele has looked into the future and admits there is a possibility he could tackle the marathon. His predecessor as “world’s greatest distance runner”, Haile Gebrselassie, holds the marathon world record at 2 hours 3 minutes 59 seconds and Bekele has made a habit of replacing Gebrselassie’s name in the record books with his own.
“At this time I don’t think about the marathon,” he says. “Not yet. I am quite happy to wait for the marathon. I want to enjoy the shorter distances for a little bit longer. The marathon is not easy.
“If I am going to run the marathon then I can’t go back to the 5000m and 10,000m. It will be difficult, so I don’t want to change yet. I want to enjoy the middle distances. Maybe in two or three years we will see what is going on. I am dreaming a little bit about the marathon.”
But the first target of the year is the Edinburgh cross country race. It will very likely be Bekele’s only cross country race of the year. But it will reveal much about his conditioning and whether he is on course to achieve more records on the track. The organisers no doubt count themselves lucky to have enticed him once more.
“I like the people in Edinburgh,” he says. “The organisation is very nice; they respect me, treat me in a good way. The hospitality is very important to me. That’s why I like to run there. They give me good respect.”
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