Long-distance wunderkind
Tirunesh Dibada is the youngest female world champion in the history of athletics, the first woman to achieve the Olympic 5,000m/10,000m double, and the first to successfully defend a long-distance title at the Games.
Born to run
Tirunesh Dibaba was born the city of Bekoji, nestled in the high plains of Ethiopia at an altitude of 2,800m, and home to a number of long-distance champions, including Derartu Tulu and Kenenisa Bekele, who between them won five Olympic titles. As she explained, her skill as a runner and her stamina were born out of necessity:“I grew up running with pails of water that I went to fetch from the river after school every day, to help my mother.”
Teenage track tyro
Dibaba was just 18 when she took part in her first major international competition, the 2003 World Athletics Championships in Paris. Going into the last straight in the final, she shrugged off her opponents to cross the line in 14.51.72 and become the youngest female athletics world champion in history, and the latest in a long line of great long-distance runners from a country where the bar is set very high: “When you compete for Ethiopia you must bring back gold,” she later explained. “People in our country don’t accept anything less. Winning silver or bronze is the same as coming fifth or sixth.”
Olympic debut and a fourth world title
Dibaba’s preparations for Athens 2004 were disrupted by a knee injury, but she still managed to win the bronze in the 5,000m, finishing behind her compatriot Mereset Defar and Kenya’s Isabella Ochichi. The following year, at the Worlds in Helsinki (FIN), she completed a 5,000m/10,000m double, and then in 2007, in Osaka (JPN) claimed her fourth world title, with one of her now trademark accelerations into the finish of the 10,000m final.
A historic double in Beijing
On 6 June 2008 in Oslo (NOR), Dibaba set a new 5,000m world record of 14.11:15, which has yet to be bettered. Later that year, at the Olympic Games in Beijing, she achieved another historic first for women’s athletics, winning both the 10,000m (in a new Olympic record time of 29.54:66) and then the 5,000m, seeing off the challenge of Turkey’s Ethiopian-born runner Elvan Abeylegesse on each occasion. In each race her modus operandi was the same: accelerating into an unstoppable breakaway in the final lap to leave her rival eating dust.
Marathon in Rio?
Despite four years battling with injury, Dibaba was back in the fray for the 10,000m final at London 2012, and remarkably managed to retain her title (another first). Going into the final 800m she showed that she had lost none of her ability to change gear, surging into an unbeatable lead over the last two laps. She followed up by winning bronze in the 5,000m, where she was beaten by her longstanding rival Meseret Defar. As she looks ahead to Rio 2016, where she will be 31, her appetite remains undiminished, though she has hinted she may be ready for a new challenge. “I run to make people happy,” she explained. “I’ve done everything expected of me as an athlete. I’ve won many competitions, but I’ve yet to run the marathon. The Olympic marathon is what I have left to achieve. I’ll compete in it soon. I want to achieve something that is historic and unforgettable.”
