Fast living Why a small town of farmer and herder in the Ethoipian highlands has consistently yielded many of the world's best distance runners.

It is half an hour before dawn in the Ethiopian highlands,and most of the town of Bekoji still slumbers in the shadow of a 14000 ft high (4300 m high)volcano.On the street,though,a silent army is on the move.More than a hundred boys and girls-many in bare feet,some no taller than the goats feeding by the roadside-gravitate toward a vast,grassy plateau on Bekoji's outskirts.There,a man with a stopwatch,local running coach Santayehu Eshetch,is waiting.So intense is hunger here for running-and its rewards -that Eshetu's workouts,initially meant for 25 athletes,now draw 150 or more.Focused and serious,the runners listen to his words of guidance before taking off across the plateau,their feet slapping the earth in thunderous unison. I've no doubt,that one of these kids will be world champion.



Anywhere else,that comment might be an idle boast.In Bekoji,it is a virtual guarantee.By an improbable quick of history,this small community of farmer and herder along the Great Rift Valley has become the world's leading producer of distance runners.Many of the fastest male and female middle-distance runners on the planet hail form this patch of red earth 170 miles south of the capital,Addis Ababa,the athletes attended the same primary school,trained with the same childhood coach and in two cases grew up in the same thatched-roof hut.Led by two sets of siblings-the Bekele brothers and the Dibava sisters-Bekoji's ruuners are poised to rack up medals at this summer Benijing Olympics.So many,in fact,that their medal count alone may well surpass that of many industrilized nations.It's enough to make the hand-painted sign that greets vistiors on the dirt road into Bekoji seem endearingly modest,welcome to the village of athletes.





Bron to Race
Bekoji ranks as one of sport's great anomalies.Here,after all,is a rural African town where time almost stands still,where horse-drawn carts outnumber motor vehicles and neighbors greet each other by asking after their herds or crops.And yet its most famous products are Tirunesh Dibaba,a 23 years old blur who smashedthe women's 5000 meter world record in June by five seconds,and Kenensia Bekele,26 who has run the fastest times in human history at 5000 and 10000 meters.And they are just the beginning.Kenensia's 21 years-old brother,Tariku,is the current 3000 meter world indoor champion,while Diabab's sisters,Ejegayehu and Ginzebe,are would world-class runners.Serveral other Bekoji atives are close on their heels,while hunderds of others-that silent army on the plateau-are striving to join them.The tidal wave of runners from Bekoji is unstoppable,a Canadian investment banker whose foundation,A running start,has helped build classrooms in Bekoji.The physical conditions are just perfect for producing runners.



It's tempting,when breathing the thin air of Bekoji,to focus only on the confluence of geography and genetics.The town sits on the flank of a volcano nearly 10000 ft.Above sea level,making daily life itself a kind of high altitude training .Children in this region often start running at an early age,covering great distances to fetch water and firewood or to reach the nearest school.Our natural talent begins at the age of 2,says two-time Olympic gold medalist Haile Gebrselassie,who grew up in a village about 30 miles north of Bekoji,Gebrselassie,who set a new marathon world record last year,remember running over six miles to and from school every day carrying his books,leaving him with extraordinary stamina-and a distinctive crook in his left arm.Add to this early training the physique shared by many members of the Oromo ethnic group that predominates in the region- a short torso on disproportionately long legs-and you have the perfectly engineered distance runner.




No formula,however ,can conjure up the desire that burns inside Bekoji's young runners.Take the case of Million Abate,an 18 year old who caught Eshetu's attention last year when he sprinted to the finish of a 12 mile training run with his bare feet bleeding profusely.The coach took off his own Nikes and handed them to the young runner.Today,as he serves customers injera,the spongy Ethiopian flat bread,at a local truckers motel,Abate is still wearing the coach's shoes.They are his only pair,though he confesses a preference for running in bare feet.Shoes affect my speed,he says.And speed may be his only salvation.Forced to quit school in fifth grade after his father died,Abate worked as a shoe-shine boy before getting the motel job,which pay $9 a month.All along, he has never stopped running,chasing the dream of prosperity his mother imprinted on him shortly after his father's death,when she changed his name from Damelach to Million.



A place called hope
By Ethiopian standards,Bekoji is not a desperately poor town.The famine and malnutrition that stalk other parts of the country have bypassed this region of potato and barely farms.Still,families in Bekoji's outlying villages often live hand to mouth,and distance running-like foot-ball elsewhere in Africa or baseball in the Dominican Rebublic-offers the younger generation one of the few ways out.Bekoji's trailblazer was Tirunesh Dibaba's aunt,Derartu Tulu,who left home to avoid an early arranged marriage and ended up a national hero,winning the 10,000 meter Olympic gold medals in 1992 and 2000.As a reward,the goverment gave her a lovely house behind a stand of eucalyptus trees on the ruunners' plateau.Dibaba herself has used some of her millions of dollars in winnings to build her widowed father one of the only two-story houses in Bekoji the only other is the Bekeles.Though locals gawk admiringly ,the mansion is often empty.Dibaba's father perfers to stay in his old village tukul,or conical hut,where he can cook over an open fire and keep an eye on his herd of goats.