As featured on The Washington Post

When Abiy Bisrat, owner of Enat, an Ethiopian sports bar in Alexandria, featured in the above photo, heard that Ethiopia had a very strong running team headed to the London Olympics, he went out and bought an 80-inch television.

“We already had three smaller flat screens,” he says Friday afternoon, as the women’s 10,000 meter race begins. “But I wanted to really go big. Sorry, hold on,” he says over the noise of the crowd. “I have to go turn the TV even louder, customers will want that.”

The new purchase was worth it, he later decides, after female runner Tirunesh Dibaba pulls so far ahead of the pack that she finishes more than five seconds in front of Kenyan Sally Kipyego.

“We loved watching her smile at the end,” says Bisrat, as -waitresses dressed in the country’s yellow, red and green colors serve imported Ethiopian beers and coffees.