Defar the toast of the town after setting 5,000 record

	Meseret Defar of Ethiopa signs autographs after breaking the 5,000-meter world record by .13 seconds. AP
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NEW YORK -- On the wall of the Queen of Sheba Ethiopian restaurant in New York's Hell's Kitchen stands a mural depicting the Queen's visit to King Solomon centuries ago. The queen, known as Mekeda, arrived in Jerusalem bearing gifts of previously unknown spice from the mysterious foreign land. Below the mural late Saturday night, Ethiopia's modern queen was being feted for making her own history and bringing her own spice to New York.

Meseret Defar's historic run at Icahn Stadium on Randall's Island hours earlier established a world record for 5,000 meters. With a blistering 61-second final lap, the defending Olympic champion finished in 14 minutes, 24.53 seconds, breaking the mark set by Turkey's Elvan Abeylegesse two years ago by a scant .13 seconds. Defar's feat made her the first runner to break a world record in a certified distance event (1,500 meters to 10,000 meters) on U.S. soil since Henry Rono broke the mark in the 3,000-meter steeplechase in Seattle in 1978. Defar, 22, wasn't even alive.

Defar ran a near-perfect race, emerging from the pack at 3,000 meters and stringing together 70-second laps until the final 400 meters. Her closing kick called to mind the reserve bursts of Haile Gebrselassie, Defar's countryman who is widely considered one of the greatest distance runners in history and surely its most devastating kicker. Earlier this month, Gebrselassie told Defar before a meet in Hengelo, the Netherlands, that she was primed to break her first world record on a track. Defar had recently smashed the less-esteemed 5,000 world record on the roads (14:46) and declared after that race, "Anybody in shorts is my competition."

She had tried twice earlier this year to break records on the track, running the third-fastest time in history for 3,000 meters in Boston four months ago. "Honestly, I was dreaming, after that 3,000," she said, "that I would finally have the strength for a record."

It took a transcendent gallop to outdo the likes of U.S. Olympic champions Justin Gatlin and Marion Jones, each of whom won 100-meter races on Saturday, and Defar actually ran into the record books during the day's final race, minutes after ESPN had ended its live coverage of the meet and turned off its light from the stadium's makeshift television tower. With no anticipation of history to celebrate, the race wasn't recorded for posterity. It's a telling irony about running in the States that a track world record generating such confined joy would be celebrated in the Big Apple before an emptying stadium with TV cameras that had just been turned off. They should have seen the restaurant.

As Defar and her teammates neared the restaurant, a young man approached, requesting a photo. The man wore a custom-made Yankees cap with the NY lettering in the red, yellow and green coloring of the Ethiopian flag. Defar acquiesced as he put his arm around her and gave the thumbs-up signal for his friend, the photographer. She was only getting started. Defar entered the restaurant to a wave of cheers, passing the narrow confines of the bar area as if she were taking a walk of honor on a red carpet.

She made her way to the back where she and teammates Workitu Ayanu, Tadesse Mestawot and Legesse Meskerem formed a circle around a mesob, the basket upon which food is placed for a communal feast -- just rewards for a history-making queen.

Food arrived on a large tray in dollops of traditional purees, blended in berbere, the spice and pepper sauce that also gave rise to Defar's nickname. "Meseret has the nickname 'Metea,' which is a spicy powder," a member of the delegation explained. "She has this name because she talks a lot."

Conversation loosened as the hours passed and the women began teasing one another for having slow kicks and flawed running form. Defar sipped only once during a champagne toast in her honor and then stood up to join in an impromptu eskista, a gyrating shoulder dance for which good form is surely beside the point. As several male teammates began clapping and getting into the rhythms of Amharic pop tunes, another woman began waving an Ethiopian flag behind the revelers as men from the bar clapped a chorus and feted the young legend before them.

Defar probably needed to negative-split her celebrations. After a weekend of training and sleeping, Defar and her team planned to loosen the discipline to enjoy a New York excursion. "We are going shopping," she said. "I will buy anything I might like."

That's heady progress for the girl who began running in shoes her older brother would outgrow and discard because her family in Addis was too scrapped for money. "Fifty people in this restaurant will remember what she did here and remember this night forever," Philipos Mengistu, the restaurant's owner and chef, said in the wee hours of Sunday morning. "It's a small world, but now the world is hers."

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