Year after year, record after record

“It was the cover,” Cristian Llorens tells me.

He is the director of the Zurich Mararat de Barcelonaand refers to Tesfaye Deriba.

It has been half an hour since the moment the Ethiopian crossed the goal. He has done it big, breaking the circuit record and taking the test to another dimension, since the Barcelona circuit can already boast of another milestone: it is a 2H04M circuit.

Tesfaye Deriba (26) has signed 2H04M13S, has gone 48 seconds faster than Abraham Tadesse, plusmarchist of the test until this Sunday (had 2h05m01s).

Curious, demolish and tadesse, at the same time, they serve the media. It goes, as champion. And Tadesse, who is a Swiss born in Ethiopia, a retired marathon after the Paris games last summer (is 42 years old), as a translator.

Driba speaks in Amárico.

Tadesse makes it English.

The chronicler gives it to the reader.

– Having come to run in Barcelona makes sense. In these years I have been working very well. I hoped to walk close to my personal plusmarca (2H07M52S), but I didn’t think I would overcome me with so much margin – he says.

Impeccable circuit

The organization rubs their hands: 27,000 souls are run and the records bless the moth of the circuit

We ask Tadesse:

– How do you feel, now that you have taken the record of the test?

“The records are to beat and make me happy to improve, also mine,” he says to the Galician.

(Actually, nobody will confess that it bursts you to lose a record …).

(…)

You have to relativize the perception of a record.

For the demolition (and also for Sharon Chelimo, the Kenyan who signs 2h19m33s and beats for eleven seconds the plusmarca of the circuit that Zeineba Worku Lucía for two years), a plusmarca is a milestone and a good economic achuchón (25,000 euros). For Tadesse, although he will not confess it, it is a bittersweet feeling: humanity advances, but his milestone stays a step back.

For Cristian Llorens, the director of the test is a party.

Everything goes round this Sunday.

There have been 27,000 runners (which will be 30,000 in 2026; there is no doubt about that because the test closed inscriptions in December when reaching 27,000; now, they have accounts of how many candidates to a dorsal stayed out), the meteor has given a break, it has not rained, there were six degrees at the time of the exit, then the sun has come out timidly. Illa), the Secretari General of L’Esport (Abel Garcia, although he retires injured in km 20: a soleus is broken) and the councilor d’Esports of Barcelona, ​​David Escudé. And ahead, the Grandullón denounces chest.

This Ethiopian is really great, this cover that is uncovered in km 33, when the last hare is removed (until then, the rhythm has been impeccable, always 2m57s per kilometer, a group projecting compact towards 2h04m30s; the third hare undertakes so much that it gives three kilometers, since it should have been removed in 30).

Anyway, that last hare disappears from the scene and demolishes.

Break the block, take cornelius kibet with it and then accelerate more and leave alone. At times, partial signature of 2m50s per kilometer and the organization rubs its hands.

When KM 40 reaches, it is in a position to break even the 2H04M.

Both floats, both stretches the stride, which looks like a halffondist. And the chronicler has to resort to the database: in 2017, Deriba had been sub -champion Sub 20 of 3,000 m obstacles. And in that same year, in the absolute World Cups, it ended seventh.

(His best brand is 8M13S33; then the injuries had diminished him as PISTENER and in 2023 he was inclined to the route).

The organizers dream, they look with options to jump two steps of a pull (from 2h05m to 2h03m, without going through the intermediate step), but it is distrusted in the last two kilometers, suffers a lot and behind no one presses him, and finally ends in 2h04m13s.

(You can’t have everything in life).