Down Memory Lane

Election season being in full swing and being such a following (not a leader) , I visit blogs, one or two times a day to see if Clinton has found anything besides the kitchen sink to throw at Obama. So I was surprised to see a photo of Deratu Tulu and Elena Meyer on one of the leading blogs. This primary season has gone on too long so even the blogs are throwing in distractions. Politics all the time is boring I suppose. The blogger DHinMI of DailyKos, shared the 1992 Olympic moment as one of her all time favorite sports moments.

This took me down memory lane. I happened to miss that moment it on TV. I did not phantom that an Ethiopian woman would be running that night. It took me a month to find a recording of the event. I had tears running as I watched the finish on tape a month later. Tears still well up when I recall that moment , actually in my case the moment of tape viewing. It was a hard time. Ethiopia’s future was uncertain. It was the time when our new neighbors up north treated us as colony with the complicity of his Excellency. It was the time when his Excellency called the flag a piece of cloth and Ethiopia a phantom. We desperately wanted to believe Ethiopia existed and that Ethiopia would survive this assault. We sooooooo needed a win, it did not have to be in sports, any kind of win would do. We needed to see that our flag was real and meant something and that we were after all still a country.

As if destined, out of nowhere, a teenage heroine, totally oblivious to what she was doing fulfilled our desperate needs. Derartu give us a huge shot of confidence at the right time. What she did that night would turn her into legend.

So let me ask the same question. What are your greatest sports memories?