LONDON, (Reuters) – Haile Gebrselassie was hailed as a sporting hero and genius by IAAF president Lamine Diack yesterday following the Ethiopian’s retirement from athletics.
“Sporting hero, legend, genius!” Diack said. “It’s virtually impossible to overstate the stature of Haile Gebrselassie as an athletics superstar, and so it was with great sadness that I received the news of Haile’s sudden retirement due to injury.”
The 37-year-old Gebrselassie dropped out of the New York marathon on Sunday with a swollen knee and immediately called time on one of the greatest careers of any distance runner.
Dubbed “The Emperor” in Addis Adaba where he is revered, Gebrselassie won 10,000m gold at the 1996 and 2000 Olympics and won four consecutive world titles at the distance.
Gebrselassie was equally impressive on the roads and he still holds the marathon world record which he set in Berlin in 2008.
“The multiple world and Olympic champion and world record breaker is widely acknowledged as one of the all-time greats of athletics but for millions around the world he is more than a sporting icon,” Diack said.
“His generous and warm character provide a perfect example of how to conduct yourself in life with the utmost dignity.”
London Games chief Seb Coe, who won Olympic 1,500m gold in 1980 and 1984, said Gebrselassie was arguably “the best of all time”.
“We will wait a long time before an athlete dominates over so many distances and across such an extraordinary time period as Haile Gebrselassie has done,” Coe said in a statement.
“The litmus test for a successful athlete is longevity at the very highest level and he had that in abundance. There is nothing he couldn’t do – and he did it with style. I believe he is the athlete of the last 50 years and arguably the best of all time.”
