She Tirunesh Dibaba

Childhood and Career Start

Tirunesh Dibaba was born in Chefa, a small regional town in Arsi zone of the Oromiya regional state, 260kms southwest of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa from her father Dibaba Keneni and her mother Gutu Tola on October 1st 1985.


Tirunesh was the third child in a family of five. However, her upbringing was very much different to other Ethiopian athletes, who start running from their home town to school. After all, her school, the Bekoji Elementary School, was just fifteen minutes walk from her parents� house and she never really need to run to get there unless she was really late.


Despite her �normal� childhood, Tirunesh was born into a family of runners. Her cousin was Derartu Tulu, two-time Olympic and one-time world 10000m champion and multiple world cross country medalist. Another cousin, Bekelu Dibaba, was also an inspiring runner when Tirunesh was growing up in Bekoji, while her sister Ejegayehou Dibaba had started running years before Tirunesh joined the family trend much later in her adolescent years.


Although she had such a proud family tradition, Tirunesh did not have athletics ambitions as a child. Seven years after Tulu�s maiden Olympic 10000m victory in Barcelona, Tirunesh made the long trip to Addis Ababa to live with her cousin Bekelu and her elder sister Ejegayehou in order to continue her middle school education in a more accommodating environment. But she missed the school registration deadline by six days.


Although heartbroken, returning back to her hometown Bekoji, some 276kms outside Addis Ababa, was not an option that she would consider. After all, her parents, very much like the tradition in Ethiopia�s rural countryside, would have pushed her to marry and bear children at an early age.


Instead Bekelu, who was a member of the Prisons police sports club herself, enrolled her into the club system and unknowingly kick started the career of one of Ethiopia�s greatest ever athletes.


Those who saw the youngster train with senior teammates did not give her a chance at first. At 14, she was so young and frail in physique and many bystanders thought that she would not get far running because of the physical rigors the sport demanded.