A week before making his indoor debut, a 7.41 effort (also his 3000m debut) in Stuttgart, Sileshi joined his Ethiopian club team members in a low key Ekiden in the countryside of Ethiopia. He finished the 10km stage in 27.00, almost 2 minutes ahead of the second place finisher. The distance was measured twice by car, but of course never officially approved (the world best time in a road race is 27.03 by Haile Gebrselassie in Doha, Quatar).

The Ekiden story is the best example of the way Sihine runs his races: All out, not holding back, he runs his races like a knight going into battle. In those battles the long distance warrior is known for his fast starts and feared for the running pace imposed on the field.

He explains it best himself: “I am very new in athletics, 2004 will be only my fourth year as an athlete. I don’t know much about tactics and those kind of things. All I know is that I don’t want to blame myself for not giving it all I got. Therefore I run every race as fast as I can.”

As with more aspects of Sihine, the discovery of this new Ethiopian star is a miraculous one. GSC Ethiopia contact person Getaneh Tessema passed through the little town of Shooa, north of Addis Abeba and not famous for producing long distance runners, where Sihine introduced himself. Tessema, impressed by the straightforwardness and his way of running invited him to come and run a ½ marathon race in Addis. Sileshi won the race in his famous style, blasting away from the start and not looking back. A new marathon runner was born in that summer of 2001.

Only in the summer of 2002 it became clear that road racer Sihine could also handle himself well on the track. A silver medal at the World Junior Championships in Kingston, Jamaica proved that. With new goals, still training by himself, he went into his third winter as an athlete. He came out stronger than ever keeping up with his idols Gebrselassie and Bekele in Hengelo, only letting these 2 track specialists sprint away from him in the last lap. The three put up a show at the World Championships in Paris where they ran away from the competition, clocking the second half of the 10.000m in an amazing sub 13.00; more than 7 seconds faster than his own personal best on the 5000m.

This first senior medal made him hungry for more:” After Paris I found out I could handle myself with these two legendary runners. Now I want to see if I can win a medal in Athens (Olympic Games) as well. I feel proud to be able to run with Haile and Kenenisa and I tried hard this winter to improve even more. Especially my speed has become much better. I’ll try to see if I can give them a good fight this summer.”

One thing is for sure. With Sihine in a race, pre race tactics are easy to make up. It will always be a tough, fast from the start, race.