FOLLOWING BIKILA’S STEPS, AFRICA’S FIRST TIME. ERMIAS AYELE, BAREFOOT AT ACEA RUN ROME THE MARATHON

In honor of the Olympic marathoner Abebe Bikila, Ermias Ayele will run barefoot

A race inside Rome’s thousand-years history , this is a special achievement why for an Acea Run Rome The Marathon marathoner, one to live with even more intense emotions, between the antiquity of world’s most beautiful city and the river of runners.

Next 19th March there will also be the Ethiopian Ermes Ayele among the characters chosen by Rome to run in history, to tell and make its story and to remember a magical history, Abebe Bikila’s.

ABEBE BIKILA - Just pronouncing his name you can get goosebumps; the modest and proud-eyed Ethiopian, the Olympic marathoner with a past as a farmer then become the emperor Hailé Selassié’s personal bodyguard, a simple man who is able to bare every effort. In 1960 he arrived to the Olympics in Rome thanks to the insistence against the Ethiopian government of his trainer Onni Niskanen, a Swedish man with Finnish origins, but also thanks to Abebe Wakjera’s injury, who has qualified before him, but who irresponsibly played a football game the day before leaving for Italy. Bikila, invisible to everyone, was the only one really conscious of his strength, and he won the first Olympic gold medal of the African continent, the first one by a black person in a marathon, and improved the Olympic record (2h15’16’’), all this barefoot, as he was used to inflaming, dusty and stone Ethiopian roads. He outdid his opponent barefoot, right under the Axum obelisk, stolen by Mussolini in 1937 as a trophy of Italian colonialism in Ethiopia, and run to win in the dark under the Arch of Costantino and then said “I run barefoot to better hear what the road whispers to me”.

ERMIAS AYELE - In honor of the Ethiopian Lion there will be the Ethiopian Ermias Ayele, ex race director of the noble Great Ethiopian Run organized by the champion Haile Gebreselassie.

“inspired by the figure of Abebe Bikila, I started running barefoot, finishing the 10 km Sofi Malt Great Ethiopian Run in 2021 and in 2022 in 44’53’’ and 44’27’’, just like Hawassa Half Marathon in 1h42’00” – said Ayele. “my biggest dream is to run the World Major Marathon barefoot, Bikila started with the Olympics in Rome in 1960 about 62 years ago and I want to start my long journey at Acea Run Rome The Marathon 2023”, he concluded.