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Ethiopia: Haile Justifies Beijing Pull-Out, to Witness Olympics
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The Daily Monitor (Addis Ababa)
24 April 2008
Posted to the web 24 April 2008
Addis Abeba
World marathon record holder Haile Gebrselassie said his decision not to participate in the Beijing Marathon had to do with his personal commitment to break his own world record come Sept. 28 at the 2008 Berlin Marathon.
In an interview with Xhinua, the Chinese official news agency, Haile said he would however attend the events in China as he said it is a prestige for an athlete to personally attend Olympics.
"Every sportsman wants to attend Olympic events. So do I," he said.
Haile broke the world record for the marathon (2:04:26) at the Berlin Marathon in 2007.
"This means that I cannot run the marathon at the Olympics in Beijing. You cannot run two marathons in the space of five weeks," he said.
"Also, no athlete has ever broken a world record for the marathon at the Olympics," he added.
Athletes competing at the Olympics are running for gold medals, not for fast times, the athlete said in defense of his position.
Accordingly, he said the reason that he is not running the marathon in Beijing is because he wants to write his name in the history books of world athletics by becoming the first athlete to run the marathon in under two hours and four minutes.
In March, news reports said Haile was pulling out from the Beijing Olympics over the city's air pollution.
Haile is asthmatic.
But he said he would still attend the 10,000 meters event at the 2008 Games.
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However, at a press conference on April 11, he said that he is not happy with the media which twisted what he had said, according to the report. "I will check my physical conditions and then decide. Every one of us may not feel comfortable if I lose," "Some people try to exploit the situation and say what they want to say by taking some words out of context, and that was unfair," he was quoted in the report.
On that occasion, he promised to exert his utmost effort to qualify 10,000 meters Olympic minimum so as to take part in Beijing Olympics.
He set a world record in the Berlin marathon last year and won two Olympic gold medals for 10,000 meters in Atlanta (1996) and Athens (2000). In addition to Haile, Ethiopia has a number of prominent long-distance runners including the Bekele brothers --Kenenisa and Tariku.
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