Olympic legend Kenenisa Bekele makes his debut at the Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon on January 23, 2015.<\/p>\n
Since signing up to run the world\u2019s richest marathon as Ambassador of the Dubai Holding Wellness Programme, the three-time Olympic gold medalist has been training for hours every day in and around his home city of Addis Ababa.<\/p>\n
And with no time off over the Christmas and New Year holidays, Kenenisa \u2013 under the watchful eye of renowned coach Renato Canova \u2013 is looking for at least a new personal best, despite the presence in Dubai of many of the world\u2019s greatest marathon runners.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will certainly be at least ten to fifteen athletes to watch,\u201d he said. \u201cMy fellow Ethiopian Lelisa Desisa has already won both the Boston Marathon and the Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon so he has shown himself to be a very strong athlete with great experience in marathons.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although the Dubai race will be only the third marathon on Kenenisa\u2019s CV, his reputation and achievements means the eyes of the athletics world will be on him when he adds the flat course of Dubai to his two marathon experiences of Paris and Chicago. In Paris, he won on his marathon debut with a course record and current personal best of 2h:05:04 \u2013 a time that would have taken second place in last year\u2019s Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to go step-by-step in my marathon career,\u201d he added. \u201cDubai will be a very important race for me in terms of my personal best and I have already learned from racing in Paris and Chicago. But despite my achievements on the track and cross-country, I still have relatively little experience at the marathon distance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite that relative inexperience, thousands are expected to line the route to cheer on one of the greatest sportsmen of all time in an event held under the patronage of HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Dubai Sports Council.<\/p>\n
Over the past few months, the 32 year-old Ethiopian has spent around four hours a day working on a mixture of training methods with coach Canova sprinkling the programme with endurance work and a running split of 80% road and forest running, 10% fitness and 10% strength.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve certainly worked hard with no time off during the holiday period,\u201d said Kenenisa, a man with 16 World Championship titles to his name. \u201cI\u2019m definitely ready for Dubai and looking forward to seeing everyone at the start line. I\u2019ve heard so much about the course and the conditions \u2013 now is the time to see it for myself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did my last full run in preparation for Dubai yesterday (Tuesday) and I\u2019m ready to roll\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
As well as those along the famous 42.195km route, organisers expect the grandstands to be packed from the early hours as running fans \u2013 especially those from Ethiopia \u2013 gather to show their respect for an athlete that is to distance running what Usain Bolt is to sprinting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect the grandstands to be full of singing Ethiopian fans by the time the runners take to the course at 7am,\u201d said Event Director Peter Connerton.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an incredible field with more than 20 men who have all run under 2:10 for the marathon. Kenenisa has already had a better start to his marathon career than other legends who have made the step up \u2013 including Paul Tergat and our three-time winner Haile Gebrselassie \u2013 so his participation here in Dubai has really caught the sport\u2019s attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
With an incredible legacy behind him and the kind of finishing speed at the end of a track race that ensures he remains a world record holder at both 5,000m and 10,000m, Kenenisa Bekele is sure of a hero\u2019s welcome in Dubai next week.<\/p>\n
Source: DubaiMarathon.org<\/a>board<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Olympic legend Kenenisa Bekele makes his debut at the Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon on January 23, 2015. Since signing up to run the world\u2019s richest marathon as Ambassador of the Dubai Holding Wellness Programme, the three-time Olympic gold medalist has been training for hours every day in and around his home city of Addis Ababa.\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"photographer":"","_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[165,164,163],"class_list":["post-680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-dubai-marathon","tag-haile-gebreselassie","tag-kenenisa-bekele"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/album\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/kenenisa-bekele-afp-1421791807nkg48.jpg?fit=640%2C480&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/album\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/album\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/album\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/album\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/album\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/album\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":682,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/album\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions\/682"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/album\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/album\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/album\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/album\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}