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Marathon runner Amanal Petros: Run for life

Dhe “Bielefeld district record”, Amanal Petros said on the phone, was his “first big goal” as a runner. Only recently had he even started jogging in the refugee camp in East Westphalia to run away from boredom. “The next big goal is the European record,” he says now, nine years later. And on the way there, he first wants to improve his own German record.

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It sounds bold, but in view of its personal story, it doesn’t seem impossible. Petros is daring his first attempt this Sunday at the “Maratón de Valencia”. On the very flat stretch along the coast, starting in the City of Arts and finishing on a wooden walkway, which symbolically lets the finishers walk over water, Petros had the national record of Arne Gabius (2:08:33) by a good one last year Minute pressed to 2:07:18 hours.

And it wasn’t until October that he was also able to set a national record in the half marathon in Valencia in 1:00:09. Petros, born 26 years ago in Assab, Eritrea, became the first German runner to hold both long-distance records at the same time. Of which he was “really very proud”. Because he always thinks about “where I come from and how I started”.

It was at the “Oesterweger Volks- und Feuerwehrlauf” on June 29, 2012, when the then 17-year-old stood at the starting line of an official race for the first time. He won straight away – two and a half minutes ahead of the runner-up. Just fourteen days later, the young man, who started for TSV Einigkeit 1890 Bielefeld at the time, achieved his next big win in a 5000 meter race in Borgholzhausen in 15: 36.37. First career goal achieved. The district record for the male youth U 18 is still valid today.

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