Posted on 08/11/2012 4:07:48 PM PDT by NYer
Edited on 08/12/2012 7:56:31 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
[snip]
.- Ethiopian athlete Meseret Defar provided one of the most emotional moments of the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games when she crossed the finish line in the 5000 meter race to win the gold.
She then pulled a picture of the Virgin Mary out from under her jersey, showed it to the cameras and held it up to her face in deep prayer.
An Orthodox Christian, Defar entrusted her race to God with the sign of the cross and reached the finish line in 15:04:24, beating her fellow Ethiopian rival Tirunesh Dibaba, who was the favorite to win.
A teary-eyed Defar proudly showed the picture of the Virgin Mary with the Baby Jesus that she carried with her for the entire race.
Throughout the event, Defar kept pace with three other Ethiopian runners and three from Kenya, until speeding past them on the homestretch to win gold.
The silver medal went to Vivian Cheruiyot of Kenya and the bronze to Dibaba.
Defar is also a two-time world champion in the 3000 meters. In Athens in 2004 she won the gold in the 5000 meters and in Beijing in 2008 she won the bronze.
On June 3, 2006 she broke the world record for the 5000 meters set previously by Turkish runner Elvan Abeylegesse, with a time of 14:24:53.
Thanks for this analysis. I am not a fan of track and field and I only happened to watch part of this race last night.
I know! My favorite Priest at our parish was from Nigeria.
His dad got sick and he had to go back home and I miss him horribly.
Maybe I’m mistaken but I would swear I saw the weightlifting coach from Iran make the Eastern Sign of the Cross before his man made a lift.
SO wonderful!
Saw this morning as I was getting ready to go to church, the American man who came in fourth for the men’s olympic marathon, whose whole family and with friends came to London to see him run. Saw him make the sign of the cross.
Thank you so much for posting this... I didn’t get a chance to thank you last night.
Meseret Defar is Ethiopian Orthodox. Christianity arrived in Ethiopia in the 1st Century. It long predates Western missionaries, or even Western Christianity.
I was inspired by this in a 5K race I ran today. I crossed myself at the start, and prayed to Jesus and Mary for strength in that difficult last half mile.
The picture the runner displayed is the traditional Ethiopian icon St. Mary of Zion, which is also the name of a very important Ethiopian church.
All the while she was displaying this picture the announcers were babbling about her cooperation with various UN population initiatives in Africa . . . about as stark a contrast as you could experience.
The ancient Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is one of the Oriental Orthodox (non-Chalcaedonian) churches, formerly under the Coptic Church of Egypt but since 1959 with its own patriarch.
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