The Independent

Photo: Nazret.com

By Simon Turnbull
Sunday, 31 August 2008

Approaching 9.35pm in the Letzigrund Stadion on Friday night, Kenenisa Bekele picked up the pace at the front of the field with four laps remaining in the men’s 5,000m at the Weltklasse meeting. He pulled clear with seemingly effortless ease, much to the delight of the crowd jammed into the compact Swiss arena.

By the time the bell sounded, they had whipped themselves into a state of frenzy, shouting, screaming and banging their palms on the metal advertising hoardings skirting the track. In Mexican Wave fashion, they followed the Ethiopian’s progress around the last lap by raising both arms and bowing like 26,000 unworthy Wayne Campbells paying homage to an awesome Alice Cooper.

They know a class act when they see one in Zurich, and no one in the opening show on the post-Olympic European track-and-field circuit got the locals going quite like the breathtaking Bekele. Not even the headlining Usain Bolt, who performed all of his gallery-playing moves either side of coasting to victory in the men’s 100m in 9.83sec. Or the 18-year-old Kenyan phenomenon Pamela Jelimo, who crossed the line in the women’s 800m in 1min 54.01sec, a time that has been bettered only by the great Czech hulk of a woman Jarmila Kratochvilova (1:53.28) and the Russian Nadezhda Olizarenko (1:53.43).

No, Bekele was the show- stealer in the penultimate meeting of the season’s Golden League programme. And with good reason. Just six days previously he had been on the track in the Bird’s Nest in Beijing, running away from the field in the men’s 5,000m final.

In doing so, he became only the fifth man to complete an Olympic 5,000m and 10,000m double, following in the spike marks of Hannes Kolehmainen, Emil Zatopek, Vladimir Kuts and his fellow countryman Miruts Yifter – or “Yifter the Shifter,” as David Coleman rechristened the balding Ethiopian when he took his leave of Steve Ovett on the final scorching lap of the 5,000m at the Gateshead Games in 1977. Read More.