Triple crown for Gashaw

He won in a time of 28 minutes and 32 seconds, edging out Hailemariam Amare (28:34) and last year’s winner Gemechu Dida (28:36).

But the women’s race produced a new race winner in the shape of Tigist Ketema who is better known as a track runner with a 1500m PB of 4:00:71. Ketema bided her time until the final kilometre before unleashing her sprint for home, pulling clear of 2nd placed Mestawot Fikir and 3rd placed Foyten Tesfay in the final 200m.

Both winners took home prize money of 150,000 birr (almost USD 3,000), the highest prize in the race’s 22-year history.

For Gashaw his win was redemption after the disappointment of dropping out from the Venice Marathon three weeks after being tripped at the 30km point. Following the race in Italy, he returned home and took a week to recover before committing to the race here.

With 600m to go to the finish, Hailemariam Amare who won two golds at 3000m SC and 5000m at this year’s African Championships moved into the lead. But, claiming afterwards that he thought that the start line came 150m earlier, he mistimed his run for home and was overtaken by Gashaw in the race’s final few metres.

In the women’s race Ketema saw off the challenge of the more fancied names by waiting until the final kilometre to sprint clear of the field.

A total of 41,000 participants had registered for today’s race, thus returning the event to its pre-pandemic size. As has been the practice of the past three years the mass race went off as a wave start just ten minutes after the start of the elite races with runners wearing green, yellow and red t-shirts, the colours of the Ethiopian flag.

Both the country’s president Her Excellency Sahle-Work Zewde and the Addis Ababa City Mayor Adanech Abebie were present for the start of the race.