To win the Olympics, you are special for that distance
and a dream, I mean, especially a country like Ethiopia.
When you win the Olympics, you are the best of the best.
(LEGENDS LIVE ON HAILE GEBRSELASSIE)
My father and my parent,
they didn't understand about sport, especially my father.
He said to me, "Oh, man, don't do this kind of job.
"This is, you know, just kind of wasting time."
If you are a farmer of Ethiopia you have to work hard
which means there's a whole day busy in the field.
He was brought up on a farm in a rural part of Ethiopia,
and I remember him telling me
he stole his father's radio to go into the field
and listen to his dad's radio
because he wanted to listen to Miruts Yifter
running the Olympics in 1980.
The Ethiopian long distance runners
headed by Miruts Yifter.
When I was seven, I always think about this guy.
I wish, you know, just to become like him.
He said to me, when I realised
that Miruts Yifter was from Ethiopia as well,
winning a gold medal in the Olympic Games,
and I saw the reaction of people,
how they behaved and how they wrote about him
and talked about him and venerated him,
he said, I decided then that's what I want to be,
I want to be an Olympic champion.
I met Haile Gebrselassie when
he was 18 years old in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.
He was different from other athletes
because he was very open-minded.
Even when his English wasn't that good, you know,
he tried very hard to speak English
and now his English has gotten very good,
and he always had this great gap-tooth grin.
He still has the same gap-tooth grin,
that hasn't changed about him.
So there was always something
very approachable about Haile Gebrselassie.
My father, the only time he realised athletics was good,
was when I won a World Championship in Stuttgart.
It's not just because I won in Stuttgart,
but because of what I won,
I mean, the car.
We had no car before and my father when he saw that car,
how possible this?
"From running?"
"Yes, from running."
"Are you sure that this is your car?"
"Yeah, it's my car, believe me."
"Wow, keep it up!"
The most important thing
is he was not running for money.
He's smart, he understands,
don't think about short-term money, you know.
If you perform well, the money will follow,
like everything in life and he understood that
like nobody else.
(OLYMPIC GAMES ATLANTA 1996)
Going into the Atlanta Olympics,
Haile was a clear favourite,
and he was everybody's favourite, as well.
He was the first athlete in my experience as a commentator
who stood on the start line
and he was smiling on the start line.
The diminutive figure against the tall figure of Paul Tergat,
there was a rivalry between the two of them,
it was Kenya versus Ethiopia.
(ATLANTA 1996 MEN'S 10,000M FINAL)
I was injured. By the time
I ran the semifinal, it was very hard.
Unlike most distance runners,
Haile ran up on the balls of his feet.
Each step must have hurt
and there are a lot of steps in 25 laps.
When he finished that race,
his feet looked like they were ground beef.
He willed himself to win that.
Representing Ethiopia, Haile Gebrselassie.
My reaction, it was tears, I was crying.
I didn't know that when I was there.
I didn't know how it came.
For me it looks because of dream come true for me.
I was dreaming this for many years, since when I was seven,
I'm telling you.
Silver medallist, Paul Tergat.
Paul Tergat was doing everything he possibly could
to try and win a gold medal.
He came along at the time when
there was a man called Haile Gebrselassie.
Between me and Paul, it's a long rivalry,
but one thing you don't forget,
do you expect athletics so popular without?
For Ethiopia, we need Kenyan, for Kenyan, they need us.
This is a peace fight between the two countries.
(OLYMPIC GAMES SYDNEY 2000)
The best moment of my athletics career was Sydney 2000
between me and Paul Tergat.
I can say did I win or not?
The interesting thing about Sydney in 2000
was that Haile was a little bit injured.
If Paul Tergat would have run the race from '96,
Haile would not be the Olympic champion.
But he waited until the last 300 metres
and he came to the front.
Haile, come on, let's go.
It was between life and death.
He won that race and that showed his lion mentality.
The lion of Ethiopia, I mean, he never gave up.
It was one of the closest finishes,
I mean, 10,000m athletics.
10,000m in Sydney was so close
that it was closer than either of the 100m races.
(OLYMPIC GAMES ATHENS 2004)
Haile was having injury problems,
he was building up his business career,
he'd won two Olympic gold medals
and he knew he'd met his match with Kenenisa Bekele.
You cannot keep 10,000, 5,000 metres forever.
When you're getting slower,
the others, they beat you easily.
When you're getting older you cannot keep the same speed
that you used to have.
I switched to the marathon.
I brought a kind of a revolution for the marathon.
(BERLIN MARATHON 2006 - WINNER)
(BERLIN MARATHON 2007 - WORLD RECORD)
You look at two standards, one is winning major races.
He won World Championships
at the 1,500, the 5,000 and the 10,000,
and the other one is setting world records,
and Haile did both of them.
I don't see how you cannot call Haile Gebrselassie
the greatest distance runner of all time.
In total, 27 world records
and four World Championships outdoor,
five for indoor and two Olympics.
I'm good, and now different, a different thing to do.
(ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA)
I started with the Great North Run.
People there, Brendan Foster and John Carey.
So I spoke to Miles Wickstead,
who was the ambassador for Ethiopia.
The three of us got together
and we launched the Great Ethiopian Run.
And thank you to the Great North Run
to help found the Great Ethiopia Run,
now the Great Ethiopia Run is great.
This year it's going to be 42,000 people,
the biggest in Africa.
We closed the north-east road for five, four hours, why not?
Let them enjoy.
Haile Gebrselassie, he is the one who inspired us to run.
He is a good runner and he is a strong man.
Slowly we are trying to bring more tourists to Ethiopia.
Ethiopia is a country full of many things, yeah, come.
Right now I am doing many different businesses.
I have a resort hotel.
The profitable one is a car business.
They're a fun business.
This is my favourite business, I'm telling you.
Right now, I have over 1,800 employees in the company.
Haile is very important in the community.
He has been selected President
of the Ethiopian Athletics Federation.
As the President of the Ethiopian Athletics Federation,
one of the main goals
is to work seriously with the youngsters
and the other very important thing,
zero tolerance against doping.
In my time in athletics I've met some great athletes.
Of all of them, Haile is the greatest.
He was in many ways the greatest runner,
in lots of ways the greatest personality,
he's a great man of Africa,
he's a great man of Ethiopia,
he could end up president of the country.
(LEGENDS LIVE ON)