How to Plan Your 2025 Race Schedule. The Olympic gold medalist at the distance in 2004, she bettered her own world record in July and won gold at the world championships in August. That would be her last global gold at the distance until the 2012 London Olympics.
In the 2009 and 2011 editions of the world championships, Defar contested both the 5,000m and 10,000m, but she collected just one 5,000m bronze medal each time. That changed in 2012, when she focused on just the shorter event at the London Olympics and took gold. “Choosing one has helped me succeed,” she said after the race.
By the summer of 2013, however, Defar again wanted to tackle the distance double at the upcoming Moscow world championships in August. One reason she felt emboldened to contest both distances again was the 10,000m she’d won in a solo effort in Sweden in June, setting a 2013 world-leading 30:08.06 mark after winning the Oslo Diamond League 5,000m in 14:26.90 earlier that month.
But she was also looking at her legacy on the track. “I’ve contested the world championships continuously since 2003,” says Defar, who has medaled at every worlds except her first. “I don’t expect that I’ll be running many more years on the track. I may move to the marathon.”
Her husband, Tewodros Hailu, who had been dead-set against her doubling in London a year earlier, concurred. “There’s a possibility this may be her last world championships on the track,” he says. While acknowledging that if she doubled she wouldn’t have been guaranteed two golds, he still feels that, “If she had the opportunity and even took third [in the 10,000], it would have been a great achievement.”
In the end, she was persuaded by her national federation to abandon the attempt. At the Moscow 5,000m on Aug. 17, she All About RunDisney 2025 ahead of Kenyan Mercy Cherono. “After many years, I’ve taken the gold medal again,” says Defar, who sprinted the final 200m in 29.42. “I’ve run in six world championships and I have two gold medals. It’s a big achievement for me.” Defar’s compatriot and arch-rival, Tirunesh Dibaba, took home the 10,000m gold.
Shoes & Gear Health - Injuries. With three 2013 Diamond League victories in Europe and one runner-up finish in Shanghai, Defar also collected the series prize in Zurich. “I’ve never been the Diamond Race winner before,” she says. “Winning it has made me very happy.”
In Defar’s final 2013 competition, she raced Dibaba again at the Great North Run half marathon in England on Sept. 15, where the pair lost to Kenya’s London Marathon champion Priscah Jeptoo. Defar was second, ahead of Dibaba, and improved her half marathon best from 1:07:25 to 1:06:09.
“The half marathon was very tough,” Defar says. “The Kenyan was a very strong opponent, and though I finished the race in second place, I’m very pleased I ran a personal best. She has medaled at the Olympics and world championships and won this year’s London marathon, and at the time she was better and won convincingly. And she’s now won the New York Marathon, too.”
The experience only heightened the allure of racing long distances on the road for Defar, who, despite winning her 2010 half marathon debut at Philadelphia in 1:07:45, was initially scared by the distance. “The first time I ran, I feared the distance greatly and didn’t even think I would finish the race,” she says. “But perhaps because I’d been working on my speed for so long, once I was in the race, it wasn’t so tough, and I finished well.”
The 2013 Great North Run was Defar’s third half marathon, and she came away encouraged by the obstacles she’d overcome, including wet and windy weather. “I had only 12 days of training for the half marathon, and that’s insufficient,” says Defar, who’d run four demanding races since mid-August. “I went from the fatigue of the world championships and the Diamond League to the asphalt, and given the weather conditions on top of that, I wasn’t able to win. Nevertheless, in that race, I saw that if I were to run the marathon, I could do better. It’s greatly increased my eagerness to run the marathon.”
She didn’t say where or when she might make her 26-mile debut. A 2014 race seems possible, however.
But Defar is not done racing on the oval. “As long as I have the capability, I hope to continue to race on the track, and that’s because I love the track,” Defar says.
She is currently preparing for the upcoming indoor season and eyeing the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Poland next March in particular. Romania’s Gabriela Szabo won three straight 3,000m indoor titles in the 1990s, and Ethiopian legend Haile Gebrselassie took three nonconsecutive golds at the distance, but Defar is the only runner to have won four, winning consecutive titles in the biennial championships from 2004 to 2010. In her bid for a fifth in 2012, however, she was outsprinted by Kenyan 1500m runner Hellen Obiri.
“I’ve earned many gold medals indoors,” says Defar, who set the 8:23.72 world indoor 3,000m record in 2007. “If I won again, I’d be very happy.”
“Competing at the championships five or six times is itself no easy task, but this isn’t something about which I feel ‘I have to win gold,’” Defar says. “However, my aim is to prepare carefully and do my best.”
When she isn’t chasing titles abroad or training for them at home, Defar’s responsibilities include the care of her two young adopted daughters, Melat and Lydia, who in turn motivate her, one way or another. “One day, we were all teasing one another at home,” recounts Defar, referring to an evening last summer before Moscow. “It was some days after I returned from being defeated in Shanghai.” Defar made a joke about herself being a well-known athlete who wins races. “Have you forgotten that you were second?” Lydia asked. “We all burst out laughing, and she was pleased,” says Defar.
Going into 2014, the two-time world and Olympic 5,000m champion can count on continued inspiration from the girls and Hailu, spurring her on to further successes, be they indoors or out, on the track or on the road.
