ADDIS ABABA – The 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics is set to start on July 24, 2020. We have only less than nine months. That is we have only less than 270 days to go.
Keep this in mind: Ethiopia has nostalgia to the Tokyo Olympics. The Ethiopian marathon legend Abebe Bikila collected his second Olympic gold medal in 1964 in Tokyo. That was his second win in a row. The first was collected in Rome in 1960.
Considering this the expectation in Tokyo both by the people of Ethiopia and Japan is high. The Japanese people want to witness a man like Abebe Bikila who has remained the inspiration for their young athletes for the second time after 56 years.
It will be historical for Ethiopian if a remarkable result is achieved in such a long span of time for the second time in Tokyo.
What is true this time is that the Ethiopian marathoners are in their best form. Former Olympic and world champion Kenenisa Bekele staged a thrilling comeback to win the Berlin Marathon dramatically missing the world record by just two seconds as he recorded the second-fastest time in history.
Kenenisa finished in two hours one minute and 41 seconds, agonisingly close to Eliud Kipchoge’s world-record time despite a full sprint in the final 400 metres.
There is another good record in this year. Ethiopia’s Lelisa Desisa has won the men’s midnight marathon in a sprint finish at the World Athletics Championships in Qatar, ending an 18-year-wait for a world title over the long distance for his country.
Lelisa crossed the finish line in 2 hours 10 minutes and 40 seconds at the Doha Corniche promenade in the Qatari capital, Doha, where the temperature in the midnight race was high again but humidity far lower than at past road races.
As if this was not enough another Ethiopian Mosinet Geremew finished second entering four seconds behind Lelisa.
The Ethiopian performance in the recent World Athletics Championship that was staged in Doha shows that the country’s position is a force to be reckoned with.
According to climate forecasters, Tokyo at the time of the Olympics shall be a burning spot. This is related with climate change.
According to the climate forecasters, there is record broken heat wave this time in Tokyo as concern grows over the 2020 Olympics. The temperature is now touching close to 40 to 45 c.
The rise of temperature to 40-45 c (over 100 Fahrenheit) in Tokyo this time means the heat wave fuels fears about the potentially dangerous conditions for athletes and spectators at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
But Lelisa won in midnight in a hot temperature. He said at the time he trained at the lowlands in Ethiopia. So that his acclimatization has worked very well, according to him. All these facts lead us to conclude that the Ethiopian athletics will make history in Tokyo for the second time in the span of 56 years.
The Ethiopian Herald October 29, 2019
