Ethiopia suspend Bekele over training camps

Athletics: Double Olympic champion Kenenisa Bekele has been suspended indefinitely by the Ethiopian Athletics Federation following…

Athletics:Double Olympic champion Kenenisa Bekele has been suspended indefinitely by the Ethiopian Athletics Federation following a row over training camps.

Bekele, who took gold in the 5,000 metres and 10,000m in Beijing in 2008, is reportedly among 35 athletes to be banned  from competition by the federation.

“The situation is a little bit crazy,” said Bekele’s agent Jos Hermens. “I haven’t talked to him yet today, but I know most of the athletes or the coaches have heard about it.”

The federation want athletes to attend a national training camp, but Hermens insists elite athletes like Bekele are better suited to individually tailored programmes than ones designed around a whole team.

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The Dutchman added: “My experience says that they (the federation) will back off or back out. I assume there will be talks and this will be turned around, but at the moment we have to live with this.”

The suspension could in theory prevent Bekele competing at the London Olympics this summer.

Hermens, though, does not believe the ban will last through the Games. “I cannot imagine, that would be very silly,” he said.

He feels the decision is a knee-jerk reaction from the federation after a poor performance at the World Championships in Daegu last summer. Ethiopia finished ninth on the medal table with five medals, including just one gold.

Bekele, who was making his comeback in South Korea following an 18-month injury lay-off, dropped out of the 10,000m.

Hermens added: “The federation treat individual athletes as team members and that’s not working.

“They have to go on central training. They were panicking after the bad results of Daegu so now they want all the athletes to come and train with the national team, but that doesn’t work.

“It’s good for upcoming new athletes, but for people like [double Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba] Dibaba or Kenenisa or [long distance great] Haile Gebrselassie, they have their individual programmes so you cannot just put them in a general programme from the federation.”

Bekele bounced back from his Daegu disappointment by running the fastest 10,000m of 2011 in Brussels last September.

He declared himself fully recovered from injury ahead of the Great Edinburgh Cross Country earlier this month, but finished well down the field.