Kenenisa Bekele, the Olympic 10,000m champion, was voted the IAAF World Athlete of the Year for 2004, reaffirming Ethiopia’s position as the world’s best athlete. However, as the 22-year-old tells Elshadai Negash, the trophy and his outstanding year are only the beginning of even bigger achievements to come.
In his relatively brief career, Kenenisa Bekele has won numerous races, broken records, and accomplished incredible feats, but when he walked out of his seat at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco to accept his World Athlete of the Year award, he immediately recognized that this was something very different from the medals and trophies he had stacked in his medal and trophy cabinet back home in Addis Ababa.
For starters, this gift was a bronze statue instead of the medal or trophy he was used to.
