Ottawa champ to run Toronto Waterfront Marathon

With the addition of Ethiopia’s Tariku Jufar to the 2014 Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, organizers can proudly point to four men in the field have beaten 2:07 in the past three years. Two of them have also bested 2:06.

Jufar set a course record in the 2012 Houston Marathon with a personal best time of 2:06:51. Along with Kenyans Peter Some and Laban Korir as well as fellow Ethiopian Shami Abdulahi, Jufar will focus on attacking the Canadian all-comers’ record of 2:06:55 and the course record of 2:07:05, set one year ago.

“Of course! If I break the course record I hope it will be as the winner,” the 30-year-old says laughing. “I plan to run to my shape and if God allows me that day to beat the field and win then I will be happy.”

Jufar has won several major marathons during his accomplished marathon career. In 2013 he became the first Ethiopian male to win the Ottawa marathon, setting a then-course record of 2:08:05. He also won the 2012 Beijing Marathon and most recently he finished fourth in the 2014 Seoul Marathon.

Like many of the elite Ethiopian marathoners, Jufar benefits from daily training at high altitude sites just outside Addis, Ethiopia. Indeed, the training is all done at nearly 2,500 m above sea level with the training group numbering around eighty athletes.

Jufar, of course, remembers a previous visit to Toronto in 2008 and not so fondly. He struggled to a 13th place finish in 2:18:47 on that day. Obviously he has put that disappointment behind him with pragmatic thinking.

“Honestly, I have been in the marathon for some years now and I learned that it is a very unpredictable event,” he says of that day. “Sometimes it’s just not your day and the race gets away from you and you cannot control it. A 2:18 was not anything I ever expected from myself.

“But Toronto is a beautiful city and has very nice people. The water (along Lake Ontario) was nice too!”

A year after his last visit, Jufar was hit by a car while training in Addis. It was thought he would not run again. However, he proved the skeptics wrong with a series of meaningful results beginning with a remarkable time of 2:09:32 in Los Angeles. That was good enough for second place. Considering he had missed out on training most of the year he showed his immense talent.

The Toronto course has been slightly altered this year. A series of twists and turns that were added out of necessity due to downtown construction projects last year have been removed. The course is thought to be even faster. Jufar knows he will have a tough time against the assembled field but, with a commitment from all of them and the right conditions, the course record could fall. He’d like nothing more than to cross the line first with that record.