Even on Bloody Feet.(International Edition; TURNING POINT)(Biography)

Byline: Haile Gebreselassie

It's hard to run away from a military dictatorship. How the world's fastest marathoner found a way.

I came of age under a communist military regime in Ethiopia. I could have become a farmer like my father or a soldier like many of my friends. Instead, I became a long-distance runner. And on Sept. 28 in Berlin, I broke my previous marathon record, finishing in 2:03:59--the fastest time in history.

Audacity is not always a valued trait in the Ethiopian countryside

where I grew up. You cannot afford to take risks when you are feeding 10 children from a 12-acre plot of land as my father did. And when you live in a dictatorship, any disdain for authority can be taken as a sign of treasonous intent. Yet in spite of my father's and the regime's best efforts to subdue me, I remained headstrong, which is why as a young man I ran two races I never should have.

When I was 15, my high school needed a runner for the 1,500-meter race at a county track meet, so I volunteered--and was ridiculed. At that time, I was smaller than most kids my own age, and the older boys towered above me. The spectators laughed when I burst onto the sand track in a sprint. I could hear them jeering from the metal bleachers, saying, "You'll never make it like that!" They stopped laughing when I pulled farther and farther ahead, however. And they cheered and lifted me in the air when I won.

At 16, I was invited to represent my county in the nationals in Addis Ababa. I'd never even seen a multistory building before. I was still staring at the skyline when my coach returned from the stadium's office, frowning. It turned out my race had been canceled. They'd tried to call ahead to warn us, but back then the only reliable form of communication was face-to-face. I decided that I could not return to my village without competing, however, so I asked my coach if I could enter the marathon. He refused. I was too young, he said, and I had not trained for it. He only changed his mind when I began to cry.