Instead, she stayed in Addis and, encouraged by her sister and her celebrated cousin Deratu Tulu, she took up running as a member of the Prisons Corrections Athletics Club.The rest is history. When she was 14 her parents sent her from the family farm in Bekoji to study at high school in Addis Ababa, but she missed the registration deadline, and says she would have been given away in marriage if she had returned home. "If we get the right weather in Sheffield, the field is strong enough to go quicker than 14min 24sec. The record is certainly something I want to get - if not this year, then next. It belongs in Ethiopia."Elvan Abeylegesse, who broke the record ahead of Dibaba in Bergen last summer, was Hewan Abeye of Ethiopia before she switched allegiance to Turkey Dibaba herself was very nearly lost to Ethiopian running.
The last was achieved at Crystal Palace on 26 August 1985, when Zola Budd clocked 14:48.07 over the same 5,000m distance."I definitely feel that the world record time is within me," Dibaba maintained. Should she succeed, with a little help from a trio of pacemakers and her big sister, it would be the first world record set on an outdoor track in Britain for five days short of 20 years. "Even in many of the world- class 800m races they can't do 58sec for the last lap."Dibaba's final lap in the 5,000m final eight days ago - in which she led another Ethiopian clean sweep of the medals, with her 23-year-old sister, Ejagayou, picking up a second bronze - was timed at 58.19sec. Kelly Holmes' second and final lap when she won Olympic 800m gold in Athens last summer was 58.68sec.Equally striking in both finals in Helsinki was the smoothness of Dibaba's running and the look of effortlessness etched upon her face until the bell chimed her into decisive action.The target in Sheffield this afternoon for the young woman who won twice as many gold medals in Helsinki as the Great Britain team is 12-and-a-half laps at an average of 69sec per circuit. It is little wonder that Paula Radcliffe was left awestruck by Dibaba's 58sec finale on her 25th circuit in the 10,000m final in Helsinki "It's frightening really," the Briton confessed. Even the two great barrier-breaking Ethiopians of recent times, Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele, have failed to emulate the double deeds of their compatriot Yifter.Instead, it is Dibaba who has followed in the footsteps of the man who was christened "Yifter the Shifter" when he burned off Steve Ovett with a 54.6sec final lap in the Gateshead Games 5,000m in 1977 Ovett's time on the last lap that day was 59sec. Only five athletes have achieved the feat at an Olympic Games, all male: Hannes Kolehmainen in 1912; Emil Zatopek in 1952; Vladimir Kuts in 1956; Lasse Viren in 1972 and 1976; and Miruts Yifter in 1980.
She is the first athlete - male or female - to win World Championship 5,000m and 10,000m titles, and the first woman to achieve that particular double in senior global competition. As she reflected in between victories in Helsinki: "When I won in Paris, everybody called me 'the little girl' I am no longer that little girl. I am afraid of no one in competition."Such fearlessness has elevated the diminutive Dibaba, all 5ft 1in of her, up among the lofty all-time greats of distance running. Two years on, she still has the same cherub-cheeked look, this baby-faced assassin of the track, though she has matured into the untouchable mistress of all racing surfaces.
