It was not until after she moved to Addis Ababa six years ago, the younger Tirunesh said, that she first saw a video of Tulu's seminal victory. Her own running career had begun at Bekoji Primary School as a 14-year-old, but her wider success was hastened by accident.
Tirunesh went to the Ethiopian capital in 2001 to join Ejegayehou and another relative, Bekelu Dibaba, who was also a successful runner and is variously described as a sister and a cousin. But Tirunesh arrived too late to enroll in classes. Instead, she said, she entered a cross-country race held around a horse track at Jan Meda Stadium.
Tirunesh finished fifth in the race, then was signed by a running club representing the prison police. Her international rise was startling. In 2003, two months after her 18th birthday, Tirunesh became the youngest track athlete to win a world title, taking the 5,000m at the world track and field championships in Paris.
Now a multiple world champion on the track and in cross-country, Tirunesh possesses what has been an Ethiopian trait at least since Miruts Yifter, known as Yifter the Shifter, won the men's 5,000 and 10,000 at the 1980 Moscow Olympics — the ability to accelerate intensely at the end of a long track race, covering the final 400m in 56 to 58 seconds.
"That's extraordinary," said Craig Masback, the chief executive of USA Track and Field. "There are few non-Ethiopian women who run the 5,000 and 10,000 who can run a 56-second 400 if that's all you asked them to do."
Tirunesh says that she runs only 80km to 100km a week, while many elite runners train twice that far. Her management team cautions that this given number could be low. She says she runs in the hills above Addis Ababa three times a week, twice a day, for 70 to 80 minutes. Her blistering track workouts, done three days a week at an altitude of 2,200m, call for such repeats as 4x400 meters in 60 to 62 seconds and 5x200 meters in 28 to 29 seconds.
All in the family
Tirunesh and Ejegayehou live together in Addis and insist that there is no friction in the sibling running rivalry. At times, Ejegayehou has sacrificed her interests, even though she is an Olympic silver medalist, to pace her younger sister to a fast finish.
"I don't worry about hurting her," Tirunesh said. "Every time I win, I know she is happy for me."
Ejegayehou said, "If I am running with her, I know I can improve my own times."
The two have built a house for their parents in Bekoji, where a teenage sister, Genzebe, is already a top regional cross-country runner and was the bronze medalist in the 3,000m at the 2006 Ethiopian championships.
Genzebe Dibaba is among the approximately 25 runners in Bekoji who received some small support from a youth sports club. Little or no financing from the Ethiopian track federation reaches the impoverished village, said Karl Keirstead, whose New York-based foundation, A Running Start, has donated money to build five new classrooms at Bekoji Primary School, where 3,500 students are crammed into 33 dirt-floored classrooms and must attend in shifts.
About half of the runners affiliated with the Bekoji youth club were girls. When his foundation handed out running shoes last June, Keirstead said, one girl who did not receive a pair told him bluntly, "You will regret this when I become the next Tirunesh Dibaba."
RSS