Fita Bayisa

Fita Bayisa medal table
Long distance runner
Ethiopia
Olympic Summer Games
bronze	1992 Barcelona	5000 m
World championships
silver	1991 Tokyo	5000 m
bronze	1993 Stuttgart	5000 m
World Cross Country Championships
bronze	1992 Boston	Long haul
Pan-African Games
gold	1991 Cairo	5000 m
African Championships
silver	1993 Durban	10,000 m
bronze	1998 Dakar	3000 m

Fita Bayisa (born December 15, 1972 in Oromiyaa ) is a former Ethiopian long-distance runner who was particularly successful in the 5000-meter run .

Internationally, he made his first appearance at the 1990 World Cross Country Championships in Aix-les-Bains . In the adult long-distance race, he finished only 88th, but was third in the junior race. He was able to repeat the latter success in Antwerp the following year .

In 1991 he was able to establish himself among the world's best for the first time. At the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo he won the silver medal behind the Kenyan Yobes Ondieki over 5000 m in a time of 13: 16.64 minutes . A few weeks later, Bayisa won the African Games in Cairo over the same distance in a time of 13: 38.91 minutes ahead of Ibrahim Kinuthia and Ondoro Osoro from Kenya.

At the World Cross Country Championships in Boston in 1992 , Bayisa was third in the endurance race. The greatest success of his career followed at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona . In the 5000 meter run he won the bronze medal in a time of 13: 13.03 minutes behind the German Dieter Baumann and Paul Bitok from Kenya. Bayisa also finished ninth in the 10,000m run . A little later he rounded off his successful season with a victory over 5000 m at the Athletics World Cup in Havana .

At the World Athletics Championships in Stuttgart in 1993 , he started again over the same routes as the year before at the Olympic Games. Over 10,000 m he moved back into the final, but did not finish the race there. In the 5000-meter run, he won another bronze medal. With a time of 13: 05.40 min he only had to admit defeat to Ismael Kirui from Kenya and his compatriot Haile Gebrselassie . Bayisa defeated the latter in the same year at the African Championships in Durban in the 10,000 meter run, when he finished second behind Kenyan William Sigei in 27: 26.90 minutes .

In the following years, Bayisa did not quite succeed in building on his earlier successes. Although he took top positions in his races, he could not win any more medals , apart from the bronze medal in the 3,000-meter run at the 1998 African Championships. At the World Athletics Championships in Gothenburg in 1995 , in Paris in 1997 and in Seville in 1999 , he finished eighth, ten and sixth over 5000 m, and tenth place at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta . In between he made a detour to the 3000 meter distance at the World Indoor Athletics Championships in Paris in 1997 and finished seventh there. He achieved a final success at the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000 when he finished fourth in the relatively slow 5000 meter race in 13:37:03 min.

Fita Bayisa was 1.73 m tall and had a competition weight of 53 kg. He is married and has five children. In July 2009 he was arrested by the Ethiopian police after allegedly shooting his wife in an argument.

Top performances

• 1500 m : 3: 35.35 min, July 10, 1999, Arnhem
• 3000 m: 7: 35.32 min, August 16, 1996, Cologne
• 5000 m: 13: 05.40 min, August 16, 1993, Stuttgart
• 10,000 m: 27: 14.26 min, July 4th 1992, Oslo

Web links

• Fita Bayisa in the database of World Athletics (English)
• Fita Bayisa in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ gbrathletics.com: African Championships
2. ↑ Edmonton Journal: Olympian arrested after wife shot  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   July 5, 2009