Ethiopia entered few events at the World Indoor Champs yet still finished top of the medal table. Michael Crawley and Hailye Teshome examine how it was done

In Belgrade, Ethiopia only entered three events on the women’s side and two on the men’s. They didn’t have a single entrant in the throws, the jumps or the sprints. There is no indoor athletics track in Ethiopia and the main athletics facility, Addis Ababa National Stadium, is currently closed for major renovations.

While there is a new government-sponsored all-weather track at the Ethiopian academy on the outskirts of the city, many of the athletes prepared for the World Indoors on the “red ash” track at Legetafo. 

In spite of this, the nation’s team of 14 athletes came away with nine medals, four of them gold, putting them top of the medal table. So how did they do it?

The medals were won in a variety of ways. As former international athlete Kyle Merber put it on Twitter, in the women’s 1500m they “used the genius tactics of being way better than everyone else” with Gudaf Tsegay leading the entire way for a convincing win. 

After a slightly scrappy start it took Axumawit Embaye and Hirut Meshesha all of 40 seconds to make their way into the medal positions, which they occupied the rest of the way to the finish for an Ethiopian one, two, three. 

Tsegay, as Steve Cram suggested in commentary on BBC, was probably the strongest favourite across all the track events, along with Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the men’s 1500m. If Ingebrigtsen has a slight weakness it seems to be his last 50m, and Samuel Tefera proved that if you can stay close enough to the Norwegian on the last lap he can be vulnerable – especially if he happens to have Covid.

In the women’s 800m Freweyni Hailu came from a long way back to take a surprise silver medal behind Ajee’ Wilson, while in the men’s 3000m Selemon Barega employed the Mo Farah tactic of simply refusing to let anyone else take the lead with four laps remaining, Lamecha Girma following him for second. Lemlem Hailu’s kick took her to women’s 3000m gold. 

Watching the way some of these races were run – especially the women’s 1500m – it is tempting to see a return to the team tactics employed by Ethiopia in Haile Gebrselassie’s era, when the team were referred to in Addis Ababa as “the green flood”, with athletes seeming to suddenly dominate races in the later stages. A closer look at how Ethiopia prepared for these championships shows that this is not the case, however. 

Many top athletes chose to skip the World Indoors in order to prepare for the outdoor World Championships in Eugene this summer. Hannah Borenstein, a PhD researcher at Duke University, explained that there has been a major debate in US Track and Field about what athletes choose to prioritise – with some critics focusing on Cooper Teare and Cole Hocker’s decision to run a controlled 5000m time trial in America rather than compete in Serbia. She says that “those who criticise [these] athletes say it’s bad for the sport, whilst those who defend them point out that they’re not incentivised to run well indoors”. 

This is not the case in Ethiopia, where it is far more necessary for athletes to leave the country in order to run fast times at sea-level and impress the selectors, and where skipping the World Indoors would leave you out of the running for the World Championships in Eugene.

Speaking in Afan Oromo at a press conference after the championships, coach Melaku Beratu describes the World Indoors as “marking the beginning of our work for the coming outdoor championships in Eugene and the Olympic Games in Paris”.

The Ethiopian Athletics Federation selected athletes they thought had a strong chance of making the team for both championships and made sure that these opportunities to represent Ethiopia were prioritised. As Barega put it at the press conference, speaking in Amharic: “My club has allowed me to avoid local races and focus on international races.” 

The federation in Ethiopia has moved away from a centralised system of preparing athletes for major championships in one big group towards a more individualised approach, allowing athletes to work with their own coaches. This has created a highly competitive atmosphere, both between the athletes and the various coaches who all hope to accompany their athletes to the World Championships in Eugene as well. 

While the athletes are able to prepare with their own coaches and team-mates, more or less all professional athletes in Ethiopia are concentrated in Addis Ababa, which means that in a 53-second clip on Angasu Running’s Twitter account we see Barega, Letesenbet Gidey, Girma, Shura Kitata and a host of others all sharing the track.  

It seems clear from the performances of Barega and Ingebrigtsen, who both ran well indoors before winning their Olympic titles, that building momentum and the habit of winning indoors can translate well to the outdoor season. 

And while, as Borenstein points out, many American and European athletes aren’t incentivised particularly well to run championships like the World Indoors, Ethiopian athletes are – both financially and in terms of recognition from their federation. 

Almost as notable as Ethiopia’s success at the World Indoors was Kenya’s unusually poor showing, with just one silver and one bronze medal. In many ways there is little incentive for up-and-coming endurance athletes to stay on the track rather than moving immediately to more lucrative road races, and this seems to have been the trend in Kenya. 

In Ethiopia, though, track running is still cool, and the likes of Tsegay and Barega are huge names in the country. “There is a lot of pressure that comes with representing your country, and it can be stressful, whereas when you run only for money you are less bothered,” said Barega. “But this means that when you win the Olympics or World Championships, the feeling is amazing, you are so proud.” 

With Gebrselassie and now Derartu Tulu in charge of the federation, an emphasis has been placed on allowing athletes to build their careers slowly, gradually transitioning from shorter track races towards the roads. This approach seems to be paying dividends. 

In spite of their success, the mood at the press conference was often sombre, however. Coach Hiluf Yidego called for “special respect” to go to the four athletes from Tigray region, where war continues to rage. “We are so proud and happy to win medals, but we never hear from our families,” he said. We must hope for continued Ethiopian success on the track, and peace off it, in the coming months.