Early Career
Gebrselassie was born as one of ten children in Asella, Arsi Province, Ethiopia. As a child growing up on a farm he used to run ten kilometres to school every morning, and the same back every evening. This led to a distinctive running posture, with his left arm crooked as if still holding his school books.
Gebrselassie gained international recognition in 1992 when he won the 5000-metre and 10,000-metre races at the 1992 Junior World Championships in Seoul, and a silver medal in the junior race at the World Cross Country Championships.
The next year, in 1993, Gebrselassie won the first of what would eventually be four consecutive world championships titles in the men's 10,000 metres at the 1993, 1995, 1997, and 1999 World Championships. At the 1993 World Championships, he also ran in the 5,000-metre race to finish a close second behind Ismael Kirui of Kenya. In 1994 he won a bronze medal at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships. Later that year he set his first world record by running a 12:56.96 in the 5,000-metres, breaking Saïd Aouita's record by two seconds.
In 1995, Gebrselassie ran the 10,000-metres in 26:43.53 in Hengelo, Netherlands, lowering the world record by nine seconds. That same summer, in Zürich, Switzerland, Gebrselassie ran the 5000 metres in 12:44.39, taking 10.91 seconds off the world record 12:55.30 (established by Kenya's Moses Kiptanui earlier in the year). This world record at the Weltklasse meet in Zürich was voted "Performance of the Year" for 1995 by Track & Field News magazine. At the same Weltklasse meet in Zürich in 1996, an exhausted Gebrselassie, suffering from blisters obtained on the hard track in Atlanta (where he had won the Olympic 10,000 metres gold), had no answer to the 58-second lap of Daniel Komen with five laps to go as Komen went on to win and just miss Gebrselassie's record, finishing in 12:45.09. In 1997, Gebrselassie turned the tables on Komen at the same meet. Coming off his third 10K world championship gold medal, Gebrselassie beat Komen in another Zürich classic on 13 August, 1997, covering the final 200 metres in 26.8 seconds to break his 5,000 metres world record with a time of 12:41.86. Komen, in turn, took Gebrselassie's record only nine days later when Komen ran a 12:39.74 performance in Belgium.
Read more about this topic: Haile Gebrselassie
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