Ethiopian Olympians returned to Addis Ababa on Tuesday to a mixed reaction as some fans expressed dissatisfaction with what they say was the “below par” performance of the team at the recent Paris Olympics.
While team Ethiopia was welcomed at the airport, some sports fans said they were disappointed to see Ethiopia lose races that it has previously won.
Ethiopia secured one gold medal and three silver medals at the Paris Olympics. By Ethiopia’s standards, that was an underachievement, according to residents in the capital, Addis Ababa.
“The result in general did not satisfy me,” Admassu Hussein told VOA’s Horn of Africa Service. “We did not perform well in 5,000 and 10,000 meters. We did not repeat our performances in the previous Olympics. It is a very sad result.”
Another resident of the capital, Abush Fantu, urged the Ethiopian Athletes Federation to “look into itself and find out why this happened.”
“Our performance in this year's Olympics is below par,” he said. “I am feeling bad about this.”
At the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, Ethiopian athletes won four gold medals, followed by three gold medals in 2012 in London.
Tamirat Tola was the winner of the only gold medal for Ethiopia this year. He won the men’s marathon, saying his victory was “God’s blessing.” He won the race in 2 hours, 6 minutes and 26 seconds,
Tola broke a previous Olympic record, although he says that when he competed, he did not assume that he would set a record. The earlier record, by Kenya’s Samuel Wanjiru, was 2:06:32.
“No athlete runs with the expectation of winning 100%,” he told VOA’s Horn of Africa. “You never know who wins, but you think you can do the best possible to achieve something good.”
Tola said the surface he was running on was “difficult” but was “possible with the help of God.”
It was the first men’s marathon victory for Ethiopia in 24 years.
“It’s God’s blessing; it’s people’s blessing,” Tola said. “Since no won received gold until that point, people were disappointed, but God facilitated this to happen.”
One of the three silver medals came from female marathon runner Tigist Assefa. The others were Tsige Duguma and Berihu Aregawi, who finished second in the women’s 800 meters and men’s 10,000 meters, respectively.
This story originated in VOA’s Horn of Africa Afan Oromo Service.
