February 20,2009

Second Round

Premier League Schedule

Week 16:
Saturday, February 21, 2009
South Police vs EEPCO         3pm    Hawassa

Sunday, February 22, 2009
Eth.Insurance vs Trans        3pm    Addis Ababa
Banks SC vs Adama City        5pm    Addis Ababa
Sebeta City vs Defence        3pm    Sebeta
Hawassa City vs St.George     3pm    Hawassa
Dire Dawa City vs Coffee      4pm    Dire Dawa
Metehara Sugar vs Nyala       3pm    Metehara
Muger vs Harar Beer           3pm    Ambo
*Time listed is local Ethiopian time

FAYETTEVILLE: Ethiopia’s Bekana Daba notched a world-leading time of 13min 17.89sec to win the 5,000m at the Tyson Invitational indoor athletics meeting Friday, becoming the ninth-fastest performer of all-time.

Galen Rupp finished second in an American record 13:18.12. Rupp became the 10th-fastest performer ever, and broke the previous American record of 13:20.55, which was was set by Doug Padilla in 1982, four years before Rupp was born. The American had taken the lead with two and a half laps left, but couldn’t hold it as Daba moved to the front with one lap remaining. Bianca Knight, the 2008 US collegiate indoor champion, won the women’s 200m in a world-leading time of 22.88sec. Read more »

World marathon record holder, Haile Gebreselassie of Ethiopia, is scheduled to arrive the country Thursday and would make a star appearance at this year’s Glo Lagos International Half Marathon coming up on Saturday in Lagos.

Globacom marathon office, which released Gebreselassie’s activities while in the country, stated that the diminutive long distance runner would meet with marathon officials and will also spare time to interact with the press on arrival at the airport. Read more »

Gebrselassie wants Lagos marathon season changed
By Agency Reporter
Published: Sunday, 22 Feb 2009
Track legend, Haile Gebrselassie, has advised the organisers the Glo Lagos Half Marathon to consider changing the timing of the race.

Several of the elite athletes complained about the hot and humid conditions which sapped their energy during the 21km race. The Ethiopian says this should be prevented in future after watching the athletes struggle with the 32 degree temperature on Saturday. Read more »

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Meseret Defar of Ethiopia has broken the women’s 5,000-meter indoor world record by more than three seconds at the GE Gala meet.

Defar was timed in 14 minutes, 24.37 seconds Wednesday night. Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia set the previous record of 14:27.42 in 2007.

Defar benefited from an excellent pace and was between two and three seconds under Dibaba’s split times throughout the race. During the final laps, many of the fans at the sold out arena stood to cheer her on.

With the win, Defar extended her unbeaten indoor streak to 18 races. She has not lost indoors since March 2003.

Ethiopians dominate Houston Marathon”

HOUSTON — Ethiopia’s Deriba Merga broke the 20-year-old Chevron Houston Marathon course record by more than two minutes en route to winning the 37th annual race with the fastest marathon run in Texas.

Aided in the early stages of the race by three pacesetters, Merga, 28, set a blistering pace, which, at mile 18, found him in range of running the fastest marathon ever on U.S. soil. When the final pacesetter stepped off the course after mile 17, Merga ran solo to hit the finish line in 2:07:52, breaking the course record of 2:10:04 set by Richard Kaitany (KEN) in 1989. Read more »

HAILE Gebrselassie, the greatest long-distance runner in history, is Melbourne-bound — for the Great Australian Run, a 15-kilometre road race around the streets of Melbourne on November 30 — and with him, he will bring some food for thought for all those elite Australian sportsmen who reckon they do it tough to achieve success. To find out just what makes him tick, we did some research about the Ethiopian runner, who this month became the first man to break two hours four minutes for the marathon (and, in all, has broken 27 world records). This is what we found out:

Read more »

Italian Embassy Donates Sports Equipments to 17 Schools
The Daily Monitor (Addis Ababa)

NEWS
28 October 2008
Posted to the web 28 October 2008
Addis Ababa

The Italian Regione Lazio, COME2PLAY Project donated sport equipments to 17 Addis Ababa School Teams participating to “Youth Sport Training in Ethiopia” launched by the Minister of Youth and Sport on Saturday.

The Ethiopian Minister of Youth and Sport, the Italian Ambassador’s in Ethiopia, representatives from Addis Ababa University and from Addis Ababa Youth and Sport Bureau attended the event at Juventus Club here.

Read more »

Two local lawyers, Kathy Church of Sustainable Solutions and Sarah Armstrong of GE are holding a Coffee House fundraiser for Ethiopia that includes a silent auction and concert at the Gordon Best Theatre, 216 Hunter St. W., on Saturday, Nov. 8 at 7:30 p. m.

All of the ticket and silent auction proceeds will go to Ethiopia through the

Canadian charity Partners in the Horn of Africa to establish a group home for poor, rural young

women with academic promise to access post-secondary education opportunities.

Many of the young women have come

through the charity’s other programs for HIV orphans and school-support projects for elementary and high school students. The group home project needs $10,000 for the first year. For further information about the charity, visit www.partnersinthehorn.org

Read more »

Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia crossed the finish line at the Berlin Marathon on Sunday, setting a new world record.

Haile Gebrselassie smashed his marathon world record by 27 seconds, winning the Berlin Marathon in a city where he has had so much success. Gebrselassie, 35, of Ethiopia, took advantage of excellent conditions on a flat course to finish in 2hours, 3minutes, 59seconds. Despite an ailing calf, he shattered the mark he set in Berlin last year and became the first man to win this race three times. Gebrselassie thanked the crowd of about 1 million for helping him set his 26th world record. Gebrselassie first ran in Berlin in 2006 and clocked 2:05:56 before breaking the world record last year. In three years, he has improved nearly two minutes on his time. “Berlin is my lucky city,” Gebrselassie said. In the women’s race, Irina Mikitenko of Germany won in 2:19:19. She improved her personal best by more than four minutes to record the seventh-fastest time for a woman