• Source: Efrem Gidey

    • Efrem Gidey (born 3 September 2000) is an Irish long distance runner. He is the Irish record holder in the half marathon.


    Early life


    Gidey fled Eritrea as a refugee in 2016 and spent six months at a refugee camp in Calais before arriving in Dublin in March 2017 when he was 16 years-old. He learnt English at Le Chéile Secondary School in Tyrellstown, where he sat the Leaving Cert in 2019 and began training at Clonliffe Harriers under Joe Cooper. He later lived with Cooper's son Ian. He won the senior boys’ race at the Irish Schools Cross Country Championships and he won the senior boys’ 5,000m at the All-Ireland Schools Track and Field Championships in both 2018 and 2019. After Cooper's death in 2020 he continued a relationship with the family, with Cooper’s wife Gladys and Ian supporting him at races.


    Career


    Gidey received Irish citizenship in 2019. That year, he won the All Ireland Schools U20 men’s 5000m race with a U20 national record time of 14:34.22. He won a bronze medal at the 2019 European Cross Country Championships in Lisbon in the U20 individual event, won by Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
    Gidey finished sixth in the 10,000 metres at the 2022 European Athletics Championships in Munich. In October 2022, he set a course record in helping his Clonliffe team win the Northern Ireland and Ulster Road Relay Championships in Victoria Park, Belfast.
    In September 2023, he finished fifth in the Great North Run in his debut run over the half marathon distance in a time of 1:04:3.
    In January 2024, he ran a new personal best time of 27:56 competing in Valencia over 5 km on the road.
    Competing at the Night of 10,000m PB's meet in London on 18 May 2024, Gidey clocked 27:40.00 to go second on the all-time Irish list, and just 0.45 of a second from Alistair Cragg's national 10,000m record. He was selected for the Irish team for the 2024 European Athletics Championships.
    He set an Irish record time of 1:00:51 at the Copenhagen half marathon in September 2024.


    Personal life


    Gidey's family now live in Tigray, Ethiopia.


    References

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