HIS missing tooth was prominent as he grinned inside the interview room everytime someone asked him a question. But Charles Kamathi was barely audible. Even if he was, all eyes would still have been riveted on the man sitting to his right.
Kamathi had just beaten him and yet the questions were mainly aimed at the the man who had lost, not at the new world champion. Naturally, for, that man happened to be Haile Gebrselassie.
For eight years, no one had beaten the 'Emperor'. And now, here was a small-built, 22-year-old Kenyan who had sprinted past one of the biggest 'kickers' of all-time, to the 10,000m gold in the World championships.
Gebrselassie, who took the bronze eventually, congratulated Kamathi, got up and patted him.
"This man (Gebrselassie) had disturbed us for long, but we caught up with him today," said John Korir, who sacrificed himself along with team-mate Paul Kosgei in setting up the race for Kamathi.
The policeman from Embu, who took to serious running only four years ago, was devastating with his final kick from 150m that left Gebrselassie stranded.
It is true that Gebrselassie was disturbed by the sudden spurts that the Kenyans put in. His calf muscles had started aching, he said, because of the "fast and slow" laps. But who would have thought that the Ethiopian could be beaten on the home straight, no matter that he had a viral fever the week earlier. He had chased and beaten Paul Tergat in the Sydney Olympics when it looked as though the long-legged Kenyan had the last laugh at last in their long, eventful rivalry.
It was by beating Tergat, twice in succession at the beginning of the 2000 season, that Kamathi came into prominence. He was selected in the Kenyan team for the World cross-country championships and though he finished seventh in the seniors long race, he had made a mark. This year he managed the third place in the World cross-country championships, but made quite a sensation by clocking 27:47.33 in Nairobi during the Kenyan National, the best time ever at altitude for the 10,000m.
On his European debut, Kamathi had clocked a fantastic 26:51.49 at Brussels in September, 1999 that was easily the top time that year and still stands as the fifth best on the all-time chart. By then he had been on a tour of India and had swept all the titles on the domestic circuit in the 3000 metres and the 5000 metres.
"Haile has been a good athlete. Perhaps he had under-rated Kamathi by thinking that since I was not in the race, there was no other person who would challenge him," Tergat said after he watched the fall of his arch rival on television from his training base outside Eldoret, Kenya. Tergat had skipped the Worlds, concentrating as he was on road races this year.
Tergat felt that Gebrselassie had looked rusty in the race since he was coming back to track for the first time since the Olympic Games.
But then posterity will only remember the man who beat Gebrselassie at a World championships to end his long winning sequence of 12 races, not how fit and how ready the Ethiopian was. From now on, Kamathi, called the 'pastor' by his team-mates for his habit of praying before a big race, will have to live with that tag, the tag of a 'giant-killer'. - K. P. Mohan
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