Ariz. runner ready to chase Ethiopians

By ELLIOTT DENMAN

Gannett News Service

ATHENS, Greece - Ethiopians have owned the 10,000 meters for most of the last decade.

Haile Gebrselassie has won the last two Olympic titles. Sileshi Sihine lowered Gebrselassie's world record to 26:39.69 on May 31, and Kenenisa Bekele sliced that one to 26:20.31 a week later.

With the famed Gebrselassie teaming with Sihine and Bekele, it would shock no one to see Ethiopians run 1-2-3 in the Olympic 10,000, the highlight of Friday's first full day of track and field competition.

Abdihakem Abdirahman - just call him ``Abdi'' - has never run at the Ethiopians' astounding pace.

But the 27-year-old, Somalia-born distance star, a 1995 Tucson High School and 1999 University of Arizona graduate, hopes to be in the mix of leading runners behind them.

``Top five, top six maybe; I want to be in the top eight definitely,'' he said Monday.

His time of 27:34.24 in a Stanford University meet April 30 ranks 15th in the world this year. But not all those 14 ahead of him will be running in Athens, boosting his chances.

He ran 27:55.00 to place second behind Meb Keflezighi's 27:36.49 at the U.S. Olympic Trials last month in Sacramento but became America's No. 1 entry for Athens when Keflezighi opted to stick to the marathon.

``I am ready to run whatever it takes, as far as I can,'' he said. ``I certainly won't take it out at 62-63 seconds a lap the way (the Ethiopians) probably will. If you try to do that, it's like a red flag right away. You know it's going to cost you later.

``Anyway, this isn't a race you run for time, this is a race you run for place. A good pace for me would be 64, 65 a lap, that is something I know I can handle, I've been training for that sort of thing.

``It's going to be warm, too; that's just another thing I'm going to have to deal with.''

For the past four years, Abdirahman has lugged a videotape of Billy Mills' stunning upset 10,000-meter triumph at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics - the only time an American has ever won the Olympic 10,000 - in his luggage.

He said the college roommate who gave him the tape told him, ``Abdi, I have some good thing for you; look at this, this guy was unknown, he won the Olympic gold medal, and he proved that anything can happen."