Owen abroad

Archive for the ‘Sport’ Category

Thirty four thousand runners gathered today in the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, for Africa’s biggest road race, the Great Ethiopian Run.

Koreni Jelila and Tilahun Regassa won the women’s and men’s races respectively, both with new course records.

The world record holders for the marathon, Paula Radcliffe and Haile Gebreselassie started the race and gave the awards. (For Ethiopians, that’s like saying that David Beckham was there with Pele).

Thirty four thousand Ethiopians enjoyed their national sport, running, jogging and walking the 10km route through the nation’s capital. Bands played, and fire hoses provided welcome relief from the warm sun.

Several hundred foreign runners came especially for the event, many of them raising thousands of dollars for Ethiopian charities and causes.  There were more than 70 runners from Ireland, raising money for Orbis, and runners from Leipzig (which is twinned with Addis Ababa) and from our own Serpentine Running Club in London, raising money for the prevention and treatment of Mossy Foot.

And G and I managed to get our photo taken with Haile Gebreselassie.

G and I had the privilege of joining great athletes and olympians including Haile Gebreselassie, Paula Radcliffe, Richard Nerurkar, Millon Wolde, Hugh Jones, and sponsors of tomorrow’s Great Ethiopian Run, for dinner at Castellis Restaurant in Addis Ababa.

Here is a picture of G chatting with Paula.

The Great Ethiopian Run is Africa’s largest road race – 33 thousand official entrants (plus a couple of thousand more!) will be taking part in a this 10km race at 2,500 metres above sea level. G and I ran it in 2002 and again in 2008.

Great remark (h/t @Michael_Keizer on Twitter) – a British athlete was asked after the 2004 Great Ethiopian Run how he had found the atmosphere.  His reply: “it’s thin”.

About six years ago I threw together a website, www.runningforfitness.org, to make running-related calculations (for example: if I can run a 10km in one hour, how long might it take me to run a half marathon?).

Today I’ve changed one of the calculations because I made a mistake when I programmed the “Cameron Formula” (which is one way to predict how much more slowly you might run as the distance increases.)

The formula, which was proposed by Dave Cameron in 1993 and described in this email, was correctly listed in the website’s help pages, but I am sorry to say it was incorrectly calculated by the website.

I’m very grateful to Chris McCarton who checked the calculation and contacted me when he could not reproduce the answer given by the website.  As a result, I have now fixed the calculation.

I’ve also mended the switch between metric and imperial measures, which had stopped working.

Here in Ethiopia it is common for little children to shout ferenj when they see a white face.  I am told that this comes from the Amharic word for a French person, ፈረንሳዊ (pronounced färänsawi), because French people were among the first white people Ethiopians had seen.

Today G and I were running down a dirt track through a small village and a small girl, about 4 years old, saw us running past.   She shouted,

China! China!

I heard the other day that there were two old men sitting on a hillside in north Wello, watching the Chinese labourers building a new road.   They were old-timers, who had fought against the Italians in 1935, and then watched the Italians build the first roads across the Blue Nile gorge and up to Eritrea. (“What have the Romans ever done for us?”)  As these men watched the Chinese roll out the tarmac, one of them said to the other:

The Italians are back. Only now they have narrower eyes.

Our Sunday runs start on Entoto, the mountain to the edge of Addis Ababa.  We start and finish at an altitude of about  3,000m.  Here are some things we’ve seen on our runs in the last two weeks:

• a leopard, crossing the path about 20 metres in front of us
• about 15 hyenas sunning themselves on rocks
• women and girls carrying firewood up the kill
• herds of donkeys, sheep and goats
• the sun

These are not things we used to see much running in Richmond Park.

In today’s Dubai marathon, Ethiopians had 8 out of the top 10 men, and 8 of the top 10 women.   That is a quite extraordinary domination of the sport. Here is Reuters:

Gebrselassie wins wet Dubai Marathon (Reuters)

DUBAI- Haile Gebrselassie produced a classic performance to win the rain-hit Dubai Marathon on Friday, though well outside his own world best time.

The Ethiopian missed out on a million dollar jackpot for breaking the world record, finishing in two hours, five minutes and 29 seconds.

Gebrselassie set the world’s quickest time of 2:03:59 in Berlin last year after opting out of the Beijing Olympics but wet conditions ruined any hopes of a repeat.

He earned $250,000 for his latest victory, leading an Ethiopian sweep of the podium with Deressa Chimsa (2:07:54) and Eshetu Wendimu Tsige (2:08:41) trailing him in Dubai.

“That’s one of the best races I’ve run in such weather conditions,” Gebrselassie told reporters after retaining his Dubai title. “I was doing pretty well until the 30km mark.

“But then things became a little bit difficult because of the rain and that made the difference. But it was wonderful to clock this time in such conditions.”
Dubai Marathon results

Leading results from Friday’s Dubai Marathon: Men

1.   Haile Gebrselassie, Ethiopia, 2 hours, 5 minutes, 29 seconds.

2.   Deressa Edae Chimsa, Ethiopia, 2:07:54.

3.   Eshetu Wendimu Tsige, Ethiopia, 2:08:41.

4.   Gashaw Melese Asfaw, Ethiopia, 2:10:59.

5.   Dereje Tesfaye Gebrehiwot, Ethiopia, 2:11:42.

6.   David Kemboi Murkomen, Kenya, 2:12:14.

7.   Mesfin Admasu Abebe, Ethiopia, 2:12:.23.

8.   Tesfaye Tola, Ethiopia, 2:12:56.

9.   Asnake Fikadu Roro, Ethiopia, 2:15:01.

10.  Nephat Ngotho Kinyanjui, Kenya, 2:15:23.

Women

1.   Bezunesh Bekele Sertsu, Ethiopia, 2:24:02.

2.   Atsede Habtamu Besuye, Ethiopia, 2:25:17.

3.   Helena Loshanyang Kirop, Kenya, 2:25:35.

4.   Tatyana Petrova, Russia, 2:25:53.

5.   Genet Getaneh Wendimagegnehu, Ethiopia, 2:26:37.

6.   Eyerusalem Kuma Mutal, Ethiopia, 2:26:51.

7.   Berhane Adere Debela, Ethiopia, 2:27:47.

8.   Shuru Diriba Dulume, Ethiopia, 2:28:26.

9.   Atsede Baysa Tesema, Ethiopia, 2:29:13.

10.  Mulu Seboka Seyfu, Ethiopia, 2:30:10.

Tom (second from the left) visiting from the UK ran for the first time at altitude (his usual run is along the waterfront in Ayr).

More photos here.

Here’s the elevation graph:

We ran ten miles this morning at the top of Entoto with a great group of runners.  The Entoto national park is a beautiful place to run, with views across Addis Ababa.

As the elevation chart below shows (full size), it is at over 10,000 feet, so you feel the lack of oxygen.

All the photos from this morning are here, or as a slideshow. If you have been running somewhere more beautiful this morning, I’d like to hear about it.

Yesterday was New Year’s Day here in Ethiopia – it was the first day of 2001 on the Ethiopian Calendar. Grethe and I celebrated by going for a run in the hills overlooking the city.

At the Asia Regional Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Manila.

Shocking fact – Afghanistan received 1,657 donor missions last year. That’s more than 4 a day, 365 days a year. How is a government supposed to govern properly if it has its face pointing towards the donors and its rear end facing its own citizens?

The annual World Bank report, Doing Business, reports an improvement in the business environment in two thirds of countries in sub-Saharan Africa.  Tanzania and Ghana are in the top-ten improving countries this year. Other countries that have simplified regulations or improved property rights include Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gambia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria and Zambia.  The report includes a useful summary of improvements in African business regulation.

This matters because the exit strategy from high poverty and dependence on aid is economic growth, and that growth must come from the private sector.  As I as I reported last year, there is a strong correlation between a poor business environment and high levels of poverty. 

It is heartening to see from this report that good Africa is making progress.  South Africa, Mauritius, Namibia and Botswana now rank among the best 50 countries in the world.  But sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 27 out of 35 of the least business-friendly countries, and it is not surprising that these are among the poorest countries in the world.

There is also a an optimistic report in this week's Economist. It quotes Michael Klein, who is the vice-president for private-sector development at the World Bank and Chief Economist at the IFC, as saying that if  governments in Africa continue to reform, GDP growth could reach 9% a year over the next decade.  That would be very good news indeed, as growth rates of that scale are needed to achieve the internationally agreed goal of halving the proportion of people living in poverty by 2015.

Reforms which improve the environment for business are frequently not very expensive, though they can be made difficult by the need to challenge vested interests.  African governments should be commended for the progress they have made, and be supported in going much further to create an environment in which private businesses can prosper.  As well as investing in health and education, creating an environment for faster economic growth is an essential component for economic development. 

• PSD Blog
• Report in the FT
• Business in Africa survey in this week's Economist
• Pienso
• Truck and Barter
• Greg Mankiw
• New Economist

The Register reports Gordon Brown's interest in extending the ID cards scheme.

In the ID world according to Gordon, on the other hand, ID management will proceed down pretty much the path laid out by the architects of the ID scheme. It won't consider more decentralised and secure approaches that tailor levels of security to need, and although such matters will surely have to be considered by Brown's ID management task force (otherwise, what does it have to investigate?), Brown himself seems to be already pre-empting its report. Government ID management will however incur the vast levels of expense and complexity associated with the original ID scheme, and will, if Brown persists with the notion of expanding it to the private sector, collapse in even greater costs and complexities.

My views on all this are here and here.  In short – we need a decentralized and secure approach. They are building government cathedrals: we need bazaars.

I wrote about the US-UK extradition treaty on seven months ago. 

Now that it is in the news again, I want to to be very clear about the problem with this treaty. The problem is not that the US Senate has not ratified the treaty, nor is that the treaty lacks reciprocity.  Those are both red herrings.

The problem with this treaty – whether or not the Senate ratifies it – is that it allows a person to be extradited from the UK without presentation of prima facie evidence against them. 

The reason that the treaty cannot be reciprocal is that American courts, quite rightly, would not permit their citizens to be treated this way.  It would breach the US Bill of Rights to extradite citizens without evidence.

So the problem will not be solved by having the treaty ratified by the Senate, as the UK Government seems to think.  Even if it were ratified, it would still not be symmetrical. Nor is the lack of reciprocity the problem in itself, though it is a clue to what is wrong. The problem is that the treaty obliges the UK government to violate a person's rights without the presentation of evidence against them.  Even if the US Government could reciprocally abrogate the rights of its citizens in the same way – and we should be thankful that they cannot – it would still be wrong.

A joint project linking the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for Global Development presented recommendations for transforming U.S. foreign assistance this morning.  The recommendation is for a new government department for global development, based on the British model for development policy.

(Full disclosure: I am the author of the chapter of the report which describes the British model which the group recommends.)

The book, Security by Other Means, will be published shortly. The near final version is online here.  This from the website for the project:

In a world transformed by globalization and challenged by terrorism, foreign aid has assumed renewed importance as a foreign policy tool. While the results of more than forty years of development assistance show some successes, foreign aid is currently dispersed between many agencies and branches of government in a manner that inhibits formulation and implementation of a coherent, effective strategy.

The current political climate is receptive to a transition toward greater accountability and effectiveness in development aid. Because this transition is clearly an imperative but has not yet been comprehensively addressed, the Brookings Institution and the Center for Strategic and International Studies have conducted a joint study that both assesses the current structures of foreign assistance and makes recommendations for efficient coordination.

Drawing on expertise from the full range of agencies whose policies affect foreign aid, Security by Other Means examines foreign assistance across four categories reflecting the interests that aid furthers: security, economic, humanitarian, and political.

Clare Short in The New Statesman writes in praise of the World Bank:

One of the great problems in the field of development is that there are too many players. Each developed country has its own programmes in the poorest countries, and so do a large number of UN agencies and NGOs. Each has a bank account, reporting requirements and missions that take up the time and energy of government ministers, who spend more time accounting to the donors than to their own electorates.

As we try to shift from unsustainable projects to an investment fund for helping countries improve their own institutions, it is the World Bank that makes the best long-term analysis and provides a framework around which other donors can co-ordinate.
Considerable progress was made under James Wolfensohn. There is more to be done, but weakening the bank would reinvent development as a mere series of charitable projects to make donor governments popular with NGOs and the wider public.

I could not agree more.   It is not the World Bank that should have to justify its existence (a justification made through its positive impact every day) but the proliferation of bilateral aid agencies and NGOs.  I remain to be convinced that the benefits of diversity and competition between aid agencies outweigh the costs of proliferation.

According to this BBC report, the Government is to back down over the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, which would have given ministers the power to alter legislation without the approval of Parliament.

If so this is perhaps the first scalp for UK bloggers, who I believe first identified the dangers of this Bill, analysis which was subsequently picked up in the mainstream media. 

And it is good news for parliamentary democracy.

Before setting off for New York this morning, we tried a new workout at thetrack.   The session is recommended by the legendary British coach Frank Horwill in his book “Obsession for Running”.   Frank was the founder of the British Milers’ Club in the 1960s, which nurtured talents such as Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett, Steve Cram and Tim Hutchings and which led to the golden era of British middle-distance running. Peter Coe based his son’s training program on Frank’s five-pace training programme, so Frank knows of what he speaks.

You run 25 continuous laps of a 400 metre track (that is, 10km in total), alternating between your 5km pace and your marathon pace.  (If you don’t know these, you can use my pace calculator at www.runningforfitness.org to estimate them from a recent race or training run.)  There are no rests between laps. 

This tough session can substitute in your programme for a tempo session; it will help improve your ability to run aerobically. Frank reckons it is one of the most effective workouts for runners who need to get fit quickly – for example to pass a fitness test or to get ready for a race after a lay-off. 

This morning I ran 83 seconds for the fast laps and 94 seconds for the marathon-pace laps – giving me a total for 10km of a fraction under 37 minutes – which is about my 10km race pace.  (I started with a marathon pace lap.)

If you are not able to sustain the paces, don’t do the session slower. When can’t make the lap times, stop and walk a lap to recover, and then pick up where you left off. 

As well as being a great fitness booster, this session gives you a feel for running at different paces, and helps you to get used to your marathon pace as an “easy” recovery pace. 

You won’t find a better way to pack a lot of benefit into a 40 minute work-out.   

Performancing for Firefox has released version 1.1 of its very impressive add-in for Firefox. It is a full featured blog editor that sits within Firefox, and makes it very easy to bash out a quick post while you are browsing.  It is especially useful if you are mainly a "link-quote-comment" blogger.  Easy to install (and uninstall if you don’t like – but trust me, you won’t want to.)

This seems to me to do most of what  I would have wanted from Flock.

Ethan Zuckerman comments on the lack of media interest (either mainstream or online) in the continuing conlicts in Darfur and in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  He also reports the study in the Lancet of the number of deaths in the DRC, which I reported on Friday.

It is shameful that, with the honourable exception of Nicholas Kristof, these unfolding disasters have had almost no media attention.
 

Politicians, the media, bloggers and other armchair experts on development almost all agree that aid for developing countries should be conditional on reforms by recipient countries, and that aid should be tied to conditions about how the aid is used.  But this approach is generally not supported by people who work in development.

I’ve written a paper which looks at the advantages and disadvantages of conditionality.   Unlike many critics of conditionality, I am broadly supportive of the policy reforms that donors recommend.  But I am not at all convinced that aid conditionality is the right way to get those reforms implemented.

There are three possible arguments for conditionality:

(a) Conditions on aid might increase incentives for policy reform by developing country governments.

(b) Allocating aid to countries with good policy environments might increase the impact of aid spending.

(c) Aid conditions might increase our ability to account for how the money was used and what effects it had.

Alongside these advantages, we should consider the possible disadvantages of aid conditionality.

(a) The conditions increase transactions costs, for both the donor and especially for the recipient.

(b) Conditions may reduce predictability, which in turn reduces the effectiveness with which aid is used.

(c) There is a possibility that some of the policy prescriptions are incorrect, either because they reflect donor interests or because some of the international experts have given poor advice.

(d) The conditions may undermine internal government systems for prioritising, allocating, managing and accounting for public spending.

(e) The imposition of external conditions may contribute to poor accountability of developing country governments to their own citizens.

As set out in detail in the longer note, the arguments for conditionality are not very persuasive; but the possible adverse consequences are alarming.  I conclude that aid  should take the form of long-term, predictable commitments, focused on countries that are pursuing policies that are likely to benefit the poor. I support aid “selectivity” linked to long-term outcomes, which is a far cry from the current system.

You can read the full note here.