I always tell young athletes the same thing, ‘Wherever you go, whatever you do, what must your top priority be? Running.’
This is what I wanted. They tell me that London is the best field in history. I wanted to be part of that. Because everyone will be there it will be a wonderful challenge for me. You can see the best runners, how they look, how they run. For me to beat the best is what counts.
What can you do if a part of it is uphill? You can’t work out another route. You’ve just got to run the one they give you. But they tell me London is a nice course. Even the cobbles, I hope, are not very much of a problem for me.
What is important is to win.
You know, I want to help my country. Definitely I can help them, simply by winning races. Sure, they can follow my path to a good career. But for me it is not enough. I want to be more than that. In everything I want to be a role model.
I haven’t done a marathon for a long time. So we’ll see. I will need good luck.
If I don’t train enough, of course I’m nervous.
I want to go down in history.
In the marathon a crazy athlete can just keep pushing from the beginning, at a championship you don’t need a time just to win the race.
My father didn’t think running was sensible. He told me running is just wasting time.
Many people know that Ethiopia is poor. When I break a world record, maybe people get to know something else about Ethiopia, something good. We can’t make planes or cars, we don’t have the materials. We do what we can.
I feel a social responsibility. We need to open people’s eyes. There is a lack of education in Ethiopia.
I want to avoid injuries by running only road.
At the end of the day, people want to see how fast you run.
Eradicate poverty. This is all that matters in my country. When I am out training I think about this a lot; when I am running it is going over in my mind. As a country we cannot move forward until we eradicate poverty.
Athletes have to be confident and I am thinking like that.
I wanted to be famous. I wanted people to talk about me.
I have seen things few of my countrymen have. The first time I went on an aeroplane I couldn’t work out how the lavatories worked up in the sky.
If you are a really good marathoner, you have to run New York.
I remember in particular my first victory when I achieved a very fast time in what were perfect conditions but since then the wind has always been a factor against me.
When I run in Ethiopia, I look out and see eucalyptus trees and rivers.