Chronicle Live
November 29, 2014
By Mark Douglas
Mark Douglas travelled to the heart of Africa to find out how a race envisaged in the North East lives up to every expectation
Haile Gebrselassie has a problem.
You wouldn’t know it from a quick glance at his famous face, which is fixed with the beguiling smile that has accompanied him on a career that has touched heights that no other athlete has managed.
This is a man who broke 23 separate world records, collected two Olympic gold medals and earned four world titles.
He bestrode the track and the streets of famous marathons in Berlin, New York and Chicago and has now carried that success into the world of business, where he is one of the chief drivers of a resurgent Ethiopian economy that is creating millionaires faster than any other country in Africa.