Ethiopia
2014

Three Records in Fifteen Days

The Ethiopian season of 2014 peaked before most of the world had taken its gloves off. Between the 1st and the 15th of February, Genzebe Dibaba — the younger sister in the most decorated family in distance running — broke three world marks in three different events in three different countries: 3:55.17 for the indoor 1500 m in Karlsruhe, 8:16.60 for 3000 m in Stockholm five days later, and a 9:00.48 two-mile world best in Birmingham to close the fortnight. By Wikipedia's accounting, only Jesse Owens and Usain Bolt have compressed three world marks in three events into fifteen days.

The precision matters: the 1500 and 3000 were ratified world indoor records; the two miles is a world best, because the event does not carry an official record. And the Stockholm run was the outlier even inside its own streak — roughly seven seconds off Meseret Defar's record and more than thirty off Dibaba's own previous best. In August 2026 it is still the world indoor 3000 m record, twelve years old and counting.

Second in the World, Indoors

2014 had no outdoor World Championships, so the global stage was the World Indoors in Sopot, Poland, in the first week of March — and Ethiopia left it second in the medal table with two golds, two silvers and a bronze. Dibaba arrived as the record-breaker and converted: gold in the 3000 m in 8:55.04, clear of Kenya's Hellen Obiri.

The other gold belonged to Mohammed Aman, who had given Ethiopia its first global 800 m title as a teenager in Istanbul in 2012 and defended it in Sopot, running down two Poles in the final fifty metres to win in 1:46.40. (His story has a hard coda: a doping-control violation from 2021 — made public only in 2025 — has him ineligible until October 2028.) Aman Wote took 1500 m silver, Axumawit Embaye ran a personal best 4:07.12 for silver in the women's 1500 — behind Abeba Aregawi, Ethiopian-born but competing for Sweden — and Dejen Gebremeskel added 3000 m bronze.

Adidas Ethiopia 2014 · in the archiveAdidas Ethiopia Pro Elite 2014 Women Crop TopThe racing crop from the same allocation — a season set from the federation channel that rarely survives together.Sold out · check back soonView piece →

The Year the Roads Changed Hands

The spring moved the story to the roads, and to a debut the sport had waited a decade for. On 6 April, Kenenisa Bekele — the greatest track distance runner of his era — ran his first marathon in Paris and won it in 2:05:04, a course record and then the sixth-fastest debut in history, quicker than the first marathons of Gebrselassie, Tergat or Wanjiru.

What nobody knew in 2014 was how much of the year's road racing Ethiopia had actually won. On the day, Ethiopian women took Tokyo — Tirfi Tsegaye, with a course record 2:22:23 — and Berlin, Tsegaye again in 2:20:18. The record books later added two more: when Rita Jeptoo's EPO positive erased her results, Buzunesh Deba was declared the 2014 Boston champion — her 2:19:59 then the fastest women's run in the race's 121-year history — and Mare Dibaba inherited Chicago. Four of the six majors of 2014 belong today to Ethiopian women. Deba's medal came in December 2016; part of her prize money took until 2024 to reach her, and not from the race organisers.

Two more threads complete the year. Tirunesh Dibaba made her own marathon debut in London — third in 2:20:35 — then announced in November that she would pause for the birth of her first child. And in Marrakech, a 22-year-old Almaz Ayana won the African 5000 m title in a championship record 15:32.72, then took the Continental Cup race by twenty-five seconds — the first big senior season of the woman who would break the 10,000 m world record in Rio two years later. Muktar Edris ran the world's fastest 5000 m of 2014 in Stockholm, 12:54.83, and Lelisa Desisa lost New York by seven seconds.

The Adidas Ethiopia Kit

The kit of that season is the one in the photographs from Sopot: adidas federation issue in emerald green mesh, a deep yellow collar, ETHIOPIA across the chest in white and the tricolour flag at the shoulder. adidas was then — and long remained — the Ethiopian Athletics Federation's kit supplier and biggest sponsor; a review of the federation's finances put the adidas payment at roughly half its annual income.

From this season · in the archiveAdidas Ethiopia Pro Elite 2014 Women Distance SingletThe emerald federation singlet of the 2014 cycle — adidas team issue with the yellow collar and the flag at the chest, the kit of the Sopot winter.80,00 €View piece →

Where the threads lead — Genzebe's outdoor 1500 record, Ayana's Rio explosion, Bekele's decade on the roads — is told in our history of athletics in Ethiopia.