It cannot be said that I am cut out for team sports. For better or worse, it’s something you’re born with.
Haruki Murakami,
What I mean when I talk about running
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-Are you cold? –I ask Ejgayehu Taye (23).
He nods: he doesn’t speak English, only Oromo.
I can barely see her face: Ejgayehu Taye is shy and has covered her hair with the hood of her sweatshirt.
I look at his feet. She wears them naked. She wears sandals without socks. I wonder why, although I don’t ask her.
Jonas Mekonen, his representative, acts as translator. His English is excellent. He studied in Washington DC, where he spends much of the year. He tells me that some of his athletes prefer to talk on the track, or on the road. That interviews are not for them. He also says that things are changing, that the young talents arriving now are different and are more open to the pen.
(…)
Ejgayehu Taye is a top athlete. She holds the 5K world record (14m19s: she broke it in Barcelona in 2021) and a pair of medals at World Championships. In Ethiopia, people recognize her and ask her for selfies. She tells me that she likes that.
He also tells me that he also likes to run. She does it by speaking with her eyes, or through Mekonen.
The talk progresses slowly.
I ask the question in English, Mekonen passes it to Oromo, and Taye chews it calmly.
“If I run, I do it because it makes me feel healthier and happier,” she tells me.
–You don’t run to win, then?
–I train to win, I assure you.
–What time can you run the 5K?
–At least, at a world record pace (she holds that record herself), although it won’t happen here. A few weeks ago I was sick and I haven’t been able to train much. This time I only came to win (just as she had done in 2021 and 2022).
–And what do you do when you’re not running?
-Sleep. I sleep for two hours after each workout. And I also sleep a lot at night. In total, around eleven hours a day. And on Sundays I go to mass.
–Do you like this life?
–Of course, I’ve already told you.
He tells me that he lives and trains almost alone, with his hare, the young Debele Kadila, in Asella, 200 km from Addis Ababa and at an altitude of 2,200 m. From there, from Asella, comes the great Haile Gebrselassie.
–Although my idol is Bekele.
-Because?
–He is strong and still very good. I love his tactical sense and his biomechanics. In reality, my true inspiration has come from Meseret Defar (double Olympic gold in 5,000m). With his money he has helped many people.
Ejgayehu Taye tells me that she herself sends money to her family.
His father died last year, a few days before the 2022 Cursa dels Nassos. Dengue fever took him away. José Luis Blanco, organizer of the race, remembers the scene, remembers Taye reaching the finish line and bursting into tears.
-Why cry? –White asked him.
–A few days ago my father died.
Dengue had taken him.
The parents were farmers in Oromia, dry land, land of barley. His six brothers are farmers, all except one, Freud, who is 18 years old and runs fast.
“He’s talented,” Taye tells me.
–And you and your brother run together?
–No, we don’t live close to each other.
If Africa has anything, it is extensions.
Nothing is close there.
As a child, Ejgayehu Taye took an hour and a half to walk to his school, how many times have we read a similar story. Sometimes she ran; sometimes, she walked. At school, she had been discovered by a teacher. The girl had presence and desire. And she was thirteen years old.
The discovery changed his life.
Today she rides through the world on her sandaled feet, frozen with cold, while she thinks about her future. Someday, she tells herself, she will be a mother, she is already thinking about it, but for now she is only considering training, today too and tomorrow, and so on six days a week except Sundays, not all souls are prepared to live like this.
(He tells me that in his long, easy jogs, he runs 24K in 1h30m: he goes at 3m45s per kilometer).
As he says goodbye, he joins his palms. She goes to take a nap.
