Beza Nababa

Nababa was born in Ethiopia, blind from birth. His father, who saw a blind child being born, panicked and left Nababa’s mother. Nababa immigrated to Israel at the age of 7. He lived with his mother in Safed and then studied in Jerusalem in a blind education. After graduating from high school he learned sound techniques and in doing so he earns a living.
Nababa began to engage in sports through the Challenge Association in Jerusalem. Starting out was riding a tandem bike (a bicycle for two riders). Later he started training for long runs, initially with only volunteers, and later with a professional running coach.

Nababa runs with a volunteer when the two are tied together by a rubber band at the waist or wrist. In April 2007, he competed in the Rotterdam Marathon with the aim of meeting the Olympic criterion for the Beijing Olympics. Nababa finished the race in first place, in a time of 3:22 hours, 4 minutes more than the Olympic minimum. Since that date was the last opportunity to pass the minimum requirements for this Olympics, and the extreme weather conditions were not fairly compared, he appealed to the Olympic Committee many times, and even to the International Court of The Hague, to allow him to meet the criterion once again. Finally he managed to get another chance to meet the criterion, and in October 2007 participated in the Amsterdam Marathon. He came first among the blind runners and even achieved the Olympic minimum for the Beijing Olympics as he crossed the finish line after 3 hours and 15 minutes, 5 minutes faster than the minimum.

After the run, Nababa climbed Everest and said, “It’s a once in a lifetime experience.”

In the Beijing Olympics came fifth, as the world’s fastest blind runner, out of thousands of blind runners. Today, Nababa is engaged in teaching sports and instilling his youth at Moore Metro-West Raanana High School.