January 11th, 2025

Dubai Set For Intriguing Battle

The 24th Dubai Marathon gets underway tomorrow (Sunday) with an elite field brimming with achievement as well as potential.

Among the elites gathered for the 6am start, is a member of what may be described as the First Family of athletics – the Tola-Dida clan from Ethiopia.

2023 Dubai Marathon champion Dera Dida – wife of Olympic Champion Tamirat Tola – is looking to regain her title while her Paris gold medal winning husband stays home and minds the baby.

Bringing their new-born daughter to last year’s Dubai race may have distracted Dera from a repeat victory (she still finished third in 2.19.29) this time she has made it a solo mission to win over one of her favourites race courses.

As befits a First Family, only the best is good enough, and their training group has got to be one of if not the strongest in the world.  Among her running partners are former marathon world record holder and Olympic silver medallist Tigst Assefa as well as the current marathon World Champion Amane Beriso.

“I don’t train with the group every day,” she said. “On a day to day basis, I train with Tamirat, but I join them occasionally. Since Tamirat won the Olympics, we’ve had a lot more media interest, but we try to concentrate on our running and not get too distracted.”

Her rivals in Dubai, Tigist Girma and Zeineber Yimer already have plenty to distact her, given that their respective best times, 2.18.52 and 2.19.07 are better than hers (2.19.24), but not so much as to deter her. “I think I’m in shape to run the course record (2.16.07) and I hope that will be enough to win.”

Another return winner has equally high aspirations, although injuries have ploughed a broad furrow between Lelisa Desisa’s glory days and tomorrow’s race. Lelisa was one of many debutant winners in Dubai over the last decade or so, but his came in winning probably the most exciting race in Dubai Marathon history.

On a rare foggy day in the Emirates, Lelisa emerged from the mists with a superb sprint finish to clock 2.04.45, and outpace four close pursuers who all finished within a handful of seconds, the first time five men had ever gone inside two hours, five minutes for a marathon.

Like Tamirat, Lelisa went on a have a superlative set of sequels, two victories and two second places in Boston and a win in New York, culminating with the world title on a torrid night in Doha 2019. A series of injuries and the pandemic halted his progress, but he maintains he’s back close to his best.

“I’ve been training with Milkesa (Mengesha), who won the Berlin Marathon last year, and with Deresa (Geleta), who finished second in Valencia; I think I’m as good, and they’re running 2.02/2.03.” he said. “Things have changed a lot since I won here in 2013. At that time, we were thinking of 2.04 to 2.07 for a marathon, now we have to think of two hours! I think I can run a personal best on Sunday.”

Since his best remains the 2.04.45 from 2013, if he and his young rivals can get anywhere near that, they’ll be threatening the course record of 2.03.34 that another colleague Getaneh Mollah ran here in 2019.

An intriguing entrant is former world record holder, Dennis Kimetto of Kenya. One of the shooting stars of recent marathon history, Kimetto had a short stellar career during which (in addition to other top victories) he won three of the most important marathons in the world, Chicago, Tokyo and Berlin, breaking the course record in each event, and setting a world record in the final one, in Berlin 2014.

He was the first to run sub 2:03 (2.02.57) and his record stood for four years. Obviously, at ten days short of his 41st birthday, Dubai 2025 is going to be a very different challenge for Kimetto.