Addis Tribune (Addis Ababa)
Alberto Zorzi
1 October 2004
The Sicilian city of Scicli hosted last week another wonderful edition of Memorial Peppe Greco, 10 km road race born in 1990 in memory of a Scicli's doctor who had died in a car accident.
In the past the race was won by such campions as Haile Gebrselassie (4 times in a row, from 1995 to 1998), Paul Tergat (1994 and 1999), Brahim Lahlafi (2000), Assefa Mezgebu (2001), Charles Kamathi (2002) and Kenenisa Bekele (2003).
This year the solo winner was Ethiopia's Sileshi Sihine, who is closing a very good season. He started with a World bronze medal in the cross country long race, continued with wonderful PBs on the track (26:39.41 in Hengelo at 10,000m and 12:47.04 in Rome at 5,000m) and reached the top with the Olympic silver medal in Athens at 10,000m behind country-mate Kenenisa Bekele.
However, the crowd was completely for Stefano Baldini, who came back to competitions after the Olympic marathon title and four weeks full of every kind of engagement, from interviews to invitations, from the World Athletics Gala to an international economic forum with many politicians, from a movie sponsored by a famous Italian radio (Radio DJ) to the Italian rockstar Vasco Rossi's concert.
Baldini found unexplainable strenght inside himself and was able to close in 2nd place. Sihine made the decisive move just after halfway: the split at 5 km was 14:29, then he run the 6th lap in an unbelievable 2:41, gaining 13 seconds on a pack with Baldini, 10,000m World junior champion Boniface Kiprop and surprising Kenyan Bernard Chepkok.
In the remaining laps Sihine controlled the race and closed with a time of 28:41, almost half a minute ahead of Baldini, who during the last lap dropped Kiprop. This was a real surprise, as Kiprop showed this year to be one of the toughest runners on 10 km distance: after the World junior title in Grosseto, he took the 4th place in Athens and then set the World junior record in Memorial Van Damme in Brussels with 27:04.00 (the previous one was Richard Chelimo's 27:11.18, set in 1991).
At the end of the race Baldini was literally assailed by the crowd, which asked him for hundreds of autographs and photos. He was satisfied and said he had run so fast probably because he is still full of adrenalin, because in last month he had had poor training
Now he is going to race again at the Giro al Sas in Trento (9 October), thenat the end of the year at Boclassic in Bolzano (31 December). For the spring marathon the choice will be between London and Boston.
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