Team Ethiopia - Profile

Medals in Current Games
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Medals in Current Games

Medals in Current Games
Rank	Men				Women				Mixed				Open				Total				Total Rank
Rank				Total				Total				Total				Total				Total	Total Rank
56	1	1	0	2	0	0	2	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	2	4	47

General Interest

Highlights:

Ethiopia's total of 54 Olympic medals have all come in athletics events. Until the 2012 Games in London, where Abeba Aregawi claimed bronze in the women's 1500m, the NOC had won all its Olympic medals in races over a distance of 3000m or longer.

The NOC first competed at the Melbourne 1956 Games and won its first medal four years later in Rome, where Abebe Bikila claimed gold in the men's marathon. Running barefoot, Bikila set a new world best in the race and beat silver medallist Rhadi Ben Abdesselam from Morocco by 25 seconds. Bikila became the first person to retain the Olympic marathon title when he won again in 1964 in Tokyo. His second gold medal performance, in another world best time, was even more impressive as he had required an appendectomy the month before the Tokyo Games started. Bikila became paralysed after he was involved in a serious car accident in 1969, but his competitive spirit was not diminished and he went on to compete in archery and table tennis at the Stoke Mandeville Games in 1970, which were the forerunner to the modern day Paralympic Games.

Two Ethiopian athletes are three-time Olympic champions. Kenenisa Bekele claimed his first gold medal in the men's 10,000m at the 2004 Games in Athens and then achieved the 5000m-10,000m double four years later in Beijing. Tirunesh Dibaba matched Bekele in Beijing, securing the women's 5000m-10,000m double, and then won the 5000m at the 2012 Games in London. Dibaba claimed bronze medals in 2004, 2012, and 2016 to take her total of Olympic medals to six - more than any other Ethiopian athlete - and she also shares the Olympic appearance record of four for Ethiopian athletes with Haile Gebrselassie and Derartu Tulu. Distance runners Gebrselassie [1996, 2000] and Tulu [1992, 2000] are both two-time Olympic gold medallists.