Asian Games: Bahrain’s veteran mother of 3, Habte, wins marathon gold

Bahrain’s Shitaye Habte, who has claimed gold in the women’s marathon at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, is a veteran runner and mother of three.

“I am feeling good. I have been training so hard, so competition is not as hard as training,” the 36-year-old Habte said, as she clocked 2 hours, 27 minutes and 31 seconds in Nagoya on Sept 26 to beat China’s Ciren Cuomu and Japan’s Mikuni Yada.

Habte pulled away from the runner-up by 12 seconds, gritting through the final stretch. “I was too tired at the end and my mind was saying, ‘not me’. But I pushed, and pushed, and pushed,” she said.

Habte finished sixth in the 10,000m at the 2012 London Olympics, before shifting her focus to road racing. She also placed sixth in 2025’s world championships marathon after struggling to adapt to Tokyo’s heat.

The Ethiopia-born runner then trained at altitude in the African nation for about five months before the Asian Games, preparing alongside former world record holder Tigst Assefa of Ethiopia.

Habte credited the cooler conditions in both Ethiopia and Nagoya for her strong run. After the race in Nagoya, she said her second son once pleaded with her: “Mama, don’t run.”

“Maybe it is the time to stop. I am 36 years old. But my target for my last competition is the World Championships” in Beijing in 2027, she said. KYODO NEWS