By Giorgio Reineri

18 April, 1998 - Manaus - The Ethiopian women’s team has won the 4^th IAAF - Amazon Government World Road Relay Championships in a time of 2:21:15, ahead of Kenya, and set a record in the process: they repeated the victory scored in Copenhagen two years ago. More importantly still, the six athletes - Yimenashu Taye, Gete Wami, Genet Gebregiorgis, Asha Gigi, Ayelech Worku and Merima Denboba - managed to survive the inferno of Manaus, which was not the case for the Chinese. Today’s competition was a distance runner’s nightmare: 34° in the shade - if any were to be found beneath the blazing sun - and nigh on 100% humidity levels.

"In Copenhagen it was cold, here it is terribly hot, but we managed to win there and here all the same" laughed Genet Gebregiorgis, who was part of the winning team two years ago too. And from Gete Wami who, in the second leg, gave Ethiopia the lead over Kenya: "I was running carefully, trying to close that 19 second gap step after step. I saw Jane Omoro dead on her feet at the end of the ten kilometres of our leg: she was exhausted and, above all, didn’t have a drop of water left in her body. She must have made the mistake of not drinking during the race."

This was truly a race of elimination and there was no shortage of drama. Just one example the arrival of Russia’s Yelena Motolova at the end of the first leg. Motolova reminded us of Gabriele Andersen, the Swiss athlete who staggered into the Los Angeles Coliseum at the end of the 1984 Olympic Marathon. Yelena too was staggering, to the point where two officials were trotting beside her: but she resisted and passed the baton to team-mate Lyudmilla Petrova, even though she was three minutes behind Jackline Maranga.

The Kenyan had run a magnificent first leg: she kicked out halfway through the leg and left Taye (ETH) and Takako Kotorida (JPN) in her wake as she steamed up to the hand-over zone in 15:39, an exceptional time considering the conditions.

At that point it looked as though the race was going to be another Kenyan walkover: Omuro is one of the great distance runners and in normal circumstances would have had no problem in holding off Gete Wami’s pursuit. But the real adversary on the asphalt of Manaus, set between the jungle and the Rio Negro, was the climate: and the climate cooked Omuro, just as it had done with Motolova, and made her lose 59 seconds. The same number of seconds, counted at the end of the 42,195m of the race, when Merima Denboba loped over the finish line, with Sally Barsosio (KEN) making a brave attempt to follow, would have reversed the outcome, given the Ethiopian’s advantage of 34 seconds at the finish.

Running a tactical race, Ethiopia were able to control Kenya, but behind the two leaders, a fierce battle was being fought between Rumania and Japan. And, thanks to a great fourth leg run by Cristina Pomaco between the 20^th and 30^th kilometre - she recorded a time for the leg of 34:33 - Rumania built up a lead which Japan was unable to close.

This was a World Championships for heroic women who more than earned their awards: $120,000 to Ethiopia, $60,000 to Kenya and $30,000 to Rumania. A prize which 19-year-old Yimenashu Taye was already dreaming of spending: "My father is dead and so I will give something to my mother to help her send my three young brothers to school; I will use some to buy some furniture for the house and then, I will buy some really good shoes for training".

Tomorrow is the turn of the men, and Kenya will once again be starting favourite, ahead of Ethiopia and Brazil. But today has taught us that surprises are very much on the cards and that all those who finish this race deserve the winner’s laurels.

The photographs are by Clóvis Miranda /Divulgaçao