Beirut Marathon – Ethiopia vows to bag the title
Besides celebrating its eighth edition, the most startling fact about the Beirut’s “unifying” Marathon is that the city is finally having a conducive environment to host a sporting event. Beirut has been a focus and flash point of the violence going on in
Middle East for past few decades, which had left the city completely devastated, to be extensively rebuilt later on. The city still has been observing bomb blasts and targeted assassinations regularly. In order to avoid the bomb threats and potential damage,
the marathon route in the city had been re-routed two years ago.
However, the good point is that according to May El Khalil, the prominent businesswoman whose initiative gave birth to the race, all the diverse and occasionally violent groups in Lebanon wished to have the marathon in a peaceful manner. She said that she
had never favoured any political party in the city; however, since she had taken the initiative of starting the race she had been in touch with all influential groups, including the Christian groups, Hizbullah and everyone else. This sort of approach from
a neutral body assures the parties that there was no potential threat for anyone of them in the event. This was the only platform where Lebanon had depicted the unity. She revealed that 35 ambassadors had ensured their participation in the event that is going
to take place on Sunday along with the representatives from the UN force in Lebanon.
El Khalil told the reporters that for both the groups, they had 3k race for MP. “In parliament they are at each other’s throats, but during the race on Sunday you would see them running together” she added further.
With organizing the race successfully, the host would seek imprimatur of the world governing body of athletics with an IAAF bronze medal label to be announced for the next year. This would most probably be proved to be the first step on the ladder of success
which has been completely dominated by the marathons in Paris, Boston, Berlin, London, Chicago, and New York the last one of which would be organized there on Sunday.
The good point here is that the Beirut race would start at 7 in the morning, considering the time difference of New York where another similar event would be hosted. The time difference between the two cities is of five hours, hence the media would get enough
time to capture and highlight the Beirut event as well.
Just like marathons around the world, at Beirut too, the real competition would be there between the athletes from East African countries. The race director Mark Dickinson, and the elite coordinator Antonio Nannoni have been running a development camp in
Ethiopia, and the majority of the participants of the race would come from that camp. One of the top discoveries made by them at the camp is Alemayehu Shumwe who possesses a personal best of two hours, twelve minutes and forty seven seconds.
However, Nannoni has been constantly persuading his runners to work out their fitness and try depicting lowest times during the event. He was of the view that the race was going to record three new best records. One from the men athletes, second from the
women runners while the third one from the Lebanese men.
For the race that is going to be organized on Sunday, Abere Chance from Addis Ababa is another pre-favourite. Though the guy would be running in his debut race, he holds a personal best of one hour, one minute and forty seven seconds for the half marathon
distance. When requested to share his comments, he was of the view that he was not sure for what he was going to do, however, he would definitely try to finish under two hours and ten minutes or at most two hours and eleven minutes.
Etaferahu Tarekegn, the favourite for the women competition and colleague of Abere Chance also hails from Addis. Just like the male counterparts, the girl is ambitious to make a new record on the track. She was of the view that provided good weather conditions,
she would try finishing around two hours and thirty minutes at most.
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