DUBAI // Ethiopian athletes dominated Friday’s Dubai Marathon as they led clean sweeps of the podium in both the men’s and women’s races.
The event was attended by Sebastian Coe, the IAAF president, and saw Tesfaye Abera win the men’s race in 2 hours, 4 minutes and 24 seconds, ahead of compatriots Lemi Berhanu, the 2015 champion, and Tsegaye Mekonnen, the 2014 winner, in third.
The women’s race was won by Tirfi Tsegaye with a time of 2:19.4, with Amane Beriso and Meselech Melkamu completing the top three.
Photo gallery: Tirfi Tsegaye and Tesfaye Abera win 2016 Dubai Marathon
The results continue Ethiopia’s success in Dubai as the past five men’s races have been won by an Ethiopian. You have to go back to 2006 for the last time a female runner from outside Ethiopia prevailed.
Abera credited his well-planned preparations for setting him up to triumph.
“I had good preparation– the training was perfect– and today my plan worked out well,” he said.
“The first 30 kilometres we had the pacemakers and the pace was steady, but after they dropped out, six of us we all started to look at each other an we slowed down.”
Abeya added that running against the winners of past two years had not made him doubt himself.
“I was confident I could win,” he said. “I was not minding that, I was running my own race.
“Now I will go home and make a plan, and hopefully the federation will pick me for the Olympics, but it’s still early.”
Runner-up Berhanu said: “I expected to win but as I came to the finish line I felt lost a lot of energy.”
The coach of the top two women runners, as well as Mekonnen and Berhanu, was thrilled with the results.
“I’m very happy with their performances,” Gemedu Dedefo said. “I wanted to win both the men and women races Tirfi Tsegaye is not just impressive, she is the strongest athlete here, she had won so many races already and I expected her to win.
“We tried to attack the course record, but in the middle we were a bit slow.”
Coe, who was a guest of Ahmed Al Kamali, the president of the UAE Athletics Federation, was impressed by what he witnessed on the Dubai roads as more than 30,000 runners took part in the marathon, the 10km run and the 4km fun run.
“This is a marathon that is growing in reputation all the time and pleasingly the participation field is growing as well, and that’s a very good story,” The IAAF president said.
Coe and the IAAF have dominated the headlines in recent weeks over allegations of doping being rife in the sport, and some failed results in the past being covered up.
The Briton said his immediate focus was on trying to rehabilitate the image of the sport.
“We’re making a lot of changes,” he said.
“I’ve got a lot of support from my council colleagues like Mr Al Kamali here, and our objective is to change the way we do things, and also to bring trust back to the federation and to the sport, but primarily to make sure that clean athletes know that we can create systems for them that they can trust in.”
akhaled@thenational.ae
Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE
Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TheNationalSport
