National cross winner Birhan Dagne is made Belgrave Harriers life member
Birhan Dagne, one of Belgrave's most successful endurance athletes, was appointed Life Member at the 2022 AGM.
Birhan centre stage at the 2004 national cross country championships.
Birhan joined the club in 1997 and competed on road, country and track for Belgrave and Great Britain. She still holds club records for 10 miles and half marathon. She continued to support the club until after the birth of her second boy in 2012.
She was born in Ethiopia and was an outstanding junior athlete, representing her country at 3000m and 10,000m at the World Junior Athletics Championship in Portugal in 1994 and also in the World Junior Cross Country Championships in Hungary the same year when she finished 10th.
The following year her she would finish 5th at the World Junior Cross in Durham, contributing to a silver medal win for team, which also featured future Belgravian Getenesh Tamirat.
Birhan had been assaulted by a soldier in Ethiopia before she came to Britain so after the race, she took a train to London and applied for political asylum.
Whist awaiting the outcome, Birhan and Getenesh lived in North London and began training and competing with Essex ladies. In 1996 they both competed for the Essex Ladies team in the National Junior Cross Country Championships which were held in Newark. Birhan won the race and Getenesh finished third. Birhan repeated the win at Staunton Park in Havant the following year but then moved to South London and joined Belgrave.
As an U23 in 1999, Birhan, now a British subject, represented Great Britain in the World Cross Country Championships in Belfast finishing 61st, and in the European U23 Championships in Gothenburg where she was 10th in the 10,000m. Later the same year she finished in 29th place in the World Half Marathon Championships held in Palermo, Italy. Her time was 1:13:41.
Much preferring road to cross country, over the next years Birhan established herself as one of the top distance runners in the country. Her favoured event was the half marathon. The list of her wins in the big half marathon's is remarkable: Reading, Bristol, Hastings, Silverston, Norwich, Birmingham, Newcastle. You name it, Birhan won it! But she always supported Belgrave during that time too, including road relays and the UK Women's League. She still holds the women’s Southern League 5000m record of 15:36.
Twice, in 2002 and 2004, Birhan was very unlucky to not be selected for the Olympics. In 2002 she ran in a special 10,000m race put on at the BMC meeting at Watford to try to gain the qualifying time of 32:30. She easily won the race, but her time was given as 32:30.4, rounded up and hand-timed not electronically timed. The selectors wouldn't budge so Birhan missed out by less than half a second.
Birhan returned to training after the birth of her eldest son in 2003. In February 2004, at short notice and unusually for her, she decided to enter the National Cross-Country Championships held at Temple Newsam, Leeds. No one expected her to run so she was not one of the favourites for the race. After the first of the two-lap race, Birhan was lying 50m behind the leader, Louise Damon. However, on the second lap she gradually pulled back the lead and eventually won by 20 seconds. This remains the only win by a senior Belgrave athlete in the National.
Birhan with (l-r) Terry O’Neil, Charlie Dickinson and Leo Coy at the Belgrave annual awards dinner in September 2022.
The same year, Birhan spent time back home in Ethiopia to prepare for the London Marathon which was the selection race for the Athens Olympics. The weather conditions in April that year were atrocious: cold, wet and windy and Birhan suffered in the race only finishing second to Tracy Morris. With Paula Radcliffe already selected it meant that Birhan again missed out despite being in the form of her life. This was proved later that year when she won the Great North Run in a time of 72:20, still a Belgrave club record.
Birhan retired from competing 2012 three years after the birth of her second son, working all hours with her husband to support her two growing boys. Their efforts were rewarded last year when her eldest boy, Ammanual, was awarded a place at Oxford University.
Now with a little more time on her hands, Birhan is using her knowledge and experience to support the club’s endurance coaching team in Battersea Park.