After stellar outdoor season, Seyaum hoping for indoor breakthrough
This winter, the 2014 world junior 1500m champion Dawit Seyaum will be hoping to erase unhappy memories of a previous indoor-related experience.
Still only 18 and a junior, she was selected as part of Ethiopia’s 2014 IAAF World Indoor Championships team selected to go to Sopot, Poland last year, but could not travel there due to visa issues.
“I was eager to be in Sopot and was training hard with the team and was hoping to to compete well,” she recalled.
“But I could not make it because of visa problems. I was very disappointed about this. My experience indoors is very limited. So in 2015, I hope to run in more indoor races to gain experience.”
Seyaum may still be unhappy about her brief 2014 indoor campaign, and she might have been a medal contender in Sport despite previously running just one race indoors, when she won over 1500m in Prague last February in 4:09.08, which placed her sixth on the all-time junior indoor list, but she certainly has reason to be proud of her other achievements.
In a busy year when she became only the fourth Ethiopian to run under four minutes for the 1500m, clocking a national junior record time of 3:59.53 at the IAAF World Challenge meeting in Marrakech, Morocco.
“It almost never happened. Prior to the trip to Marrakech, there were some challenges to get my club’s permission to compete in the race because the dates for the national championships were too close.
“After getting the permission, I went to Marrakech for the meeting thinking fast times would be possible, but I did not expect to sub-four minutes.”
Read more at: IAAF.org
