Team Europe: Bekele, Moreira and Alminova to lead women’s 3000m charge

Over the coming week, European Athletics will continue to present brief profiles of the athletes who will represent Team Europe at the IAAF Continental Cup to be held in Split, Croatia on 4-5 September.

Besides Europe, three other continental teams: Americas (NACAC and CONSUDATLE), Africa and Asia/Pacific (Asia and Oceania), will lay claim to the title of “Continental Champion.”

Today, in two parts, we run the rule over Team Europe’s female middle distance runners.

3000m

Turkey’s Alemitu Bekele won the European 5000m title in Barcelona clocking a championship record time of 14:52.20.

Alemitu Bekele (TUR)

Born: 17.09.77
Height: 165 cm
Weight: 48 kg
Club: Üsküdar Belediyesi Spor Kulübü

Major championships record:
Olympic Games: 5000m: 7/2008
World Championships: 5000m: 13/2009, 1500: 11/2009
European Athletic Championships: 5000m: 1/2010
World Indoor Championships:   3000m: 5/2010, 3000m: 10ht/2008

Personal best: 3000m: 8:35.19(2010)
Season's best: 3000m: 8:35.19 Lausanne 8.7.10

Turkey’s Alemitu Bekele captured the European 5000m title in commanding fashion en route to a championships record of 14:52.20. In doing so the Ethiopian-born ace denied her more fancied compatriot Elvan Abeylegesse the 5000 & 10000 double.

The 32-year-old Alemitu added European gold to the European 3000m indoor title she collected in Torino last year. Holder of a pacey 4:02.2 1500m performance this season, that clocking suggested she would be quite hard to beat in the closing metres of the 5000m. "I am happy to have won European gold and to achieve the championships record 14:52:20. It is a great gift for Turkey," she said.

That 4:02.2 finishing speed, which represented a 4-second improvement over her previous best at the age of 32, should also stand her in good stead for the 3000m which is the distance she is running here in Split.

Bekele transferred from Ethiopia to Turkey in 1999. Before that she ran in five World Cross Country Championships for the east African nation, collecting four team medals. This year she has been in excellent shape, following Meseret Defar home in the Stockholm indoor 5000m in a European record time of 14:46.44, thereby erasing Romanian Gabriela Szabo's previous record that has stood for almost 11 years.

Coached by Ertan Hatypoglu, compatriot Elvan Abeylegesse's former coach, Bekele contracted a severe stomach virus last summer which eventually led to her spending a month in an Istanbul hospital, with a drip in her arm for much of the time in a bid to clean out her system. Considering she only restarted training in December her recovery has been nothing short of remarkable. 

Sara Moreira of Portugal.

Sara Moreira (POR) 3000m

Born: 17.10.85
Height: 168 cm
Weight: 51 kg
Club: Marathona Clube de Portugal

Major championships record:
Olympic Games: 3000m steeple: H/2008
World Championships: 5000m:10/2009, 3000m steeple: 6/2009 13/2007
European Athletics Championships: 5000m: 3/2010
World Indoor Championships: 3000m: 3/2010

Personal bests: 3000m: 8:42.69 (2010), 1500m: 4:07.11 (2010), 5000m: 14:52.71 (2010)
Season's best: 3000m: 8:42.69 Huelva 9.6.10

In Barcelona, Moreira had the race of her life, lifting European bronze in the 5000m in a lifetime best 14:52.71. “I'm really happy,” she said. I've never been so nervous before a race but I got a medal and improved my personal best by four seconds. Anyway, the most important thing is the medal not my time and I could have got even the silver medal. But when you do the best race of your career you have to be very satisfied.”

Moreira made her debut over 10000m earlier this season at the European 10000m Cup in Marseille, finishing third in 31:26.55 and helping the Portuguese team to a successful defence of team gold.

Moreira had a fine 2009 season, kicking off with silver at the Torino European indoor championships in 8:48.18: “I still can't believe I've done this,” she said in Torino.

“It is like a dream.” She followed that with team bronze at the World Cross Country Championships and later that summer collected double gold at the steeplechase and 5000m at the world student games championships representing Oporto polytechnic.

Then in the winter she formed part of the Portuguese squad that lifted gold at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships before she travelled to Canada to take the world university cross country title.

In the 2010 summer season Moreira followed on from where she left off in 2009, setting lifetime bests from 1500m to the 10000m, the highlight coming in Barcelona. Though only 24, Moreira has been running for 16 years since she took her first steps in athletics in primary school at the age of eight.

Anna Alminova (RUS) 3000m

Born: 17.01.85
Height: 165 cm
Weight: 50 kg
Club: Luch Moscow

Anna Alminova of Russia.

Major championships record:
Olympic Games: 1500m: 11/2008
World Championships: 1500m: sf/2009
European Athletic Championships: 1500m: 6/2010
World Junior Championships: 1500m: 2/2004

Personal best: 3000m: 8:40.63 (2009)/8:28.49i (2009)
Season's bests: 3000m: 8:47.57i Karlsruhe 31.01.10

Anna Alminova is renowned for running fast on the circuit but fails to live up to her favourite tag in the major championships. This season is a case in point. In Paris she destroyed a classy 1500m field to clock 3:57.65, over two seconds faster than anyone else in Europe in 2010. But in the Barcelona European championships, she could manage no higher than sixth after making the pace for much of the race. There have been exceptions to the rule, as when she romped away with the European indoor title in Torino 2009, but in the main she has disappointed outdoors.

At the world indoors in Doha earlier this year, after managing no better than seventh in the 1500m final, she tested positive for Pseudoephedrine that was contained in an over-the-counter cough remedy and was handed a three-month ban.

That period of enforced rest meant that she could not start her summer season in May as she intended, but had to delay it until late July. However, it does not seem to have affected her form as witnessed by her time in the Paris Diamond League. Nor did the ban mean she was idle, quite the opposite as she told the Russian press: “Hardly anything changed because of the ban. It just meant I had to extend my build-up by a month and start competing later rather than sooner.”

In 2009, she won the SPAR European Team Championships 1500m title and paced Tirunesh Dibaba to a 5000m world record in Oslo. She married Russian pole vaulter, Viktor Chistiakov, in November 2008.