112 Quotes by Haile Gebrselassie

You know for me when I promise something I want to deliver. If you don’t, you have to disappear.

Many people know that Ethiopia is poor. When I break a world record, maybe people get to know something else about Ethiopia, something good. We can’t make planes or cars, we don’t have the materials. We do what we can.

If I don’t train enough, of course I’m nervous.

I’m lucky. The best possible place in the world for training is Addis Ababa, so I am home all the time except when I am racing. I like to be there, near my family, my kids, also the real estate business I run with my wife.

I was the kind of child who worked hard every day with the cows and sheep – I was a very aggressive boy.

In the marathon a crazy athlete can just keep pushing from the beginning, at a championship you don’t need a time just to win the race.

I always tell young athletes the same thing, ‘Wherever you go, whatever you do, what must your top priority be? Running.’

You must do as your people do. If my people are poor, I must be poor. People ask me, ‘Why don’t you find a personal coach or a private car?’ I can’t. Then I won’t be part of my people.

What can you do if a part of it is uphill? You can’t work out another route. You’ve just got to run the one they give you. But they tell me London is a nice course. Even the cobbles, I hope, are not very much of a problem for me.