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On a plateau high above the city of Addis Ababa, at the top of Mount Entoto, the reason Ethiopia has long dominated distance running is writ large. It is here that champions are made.

All you can see, along the hardened mud paths that criss-cross wide, open grassland, is people running. In Addis, everybody runs everywhere: women sprint to the communal well to collect water, schoolchildren skip to school, men trot by on their daily search for work.

The best of them, the athletes destined for the world"s tracks, come up to Entoto every morning before daybreak. Dozens of them hurtle past at high speed.

Today, in the middle of them, is the tiny figure of the greatest Ethiopian athlete of them all, the manifestation of a nation's obsession.

Haile Gebrselassie, 5ft 5in and the fastest distance runner ever, could train anywhere in the world, but he chooses to do so here. And he has invited me up the mountain to learn the secret of his dazzling, 19-year domination of his sport.

"This place," he says as he bends and stretches in preparation for his morning constitutional, "is like nowhere else. Here, it all starts."

He has brought with him to the top of Entoto a young Olympic hopeful. Part of a mentoring programme run by Gebrselassie"s sponsor, G4S (an international security measures company), 25-year-old Chatchai Butdee is a boxer from Thailand and has come to Addis hoping to pick up some tips to propel him to the 2012 Games in London.

G4S has signed up 14 young athletes (the "G4S 4 teen") from all over the globe and, in addition to providing financial support, sends them for week-long tutorials in Addis, hoping that some of Gebrselassie's winning mentality might rub off.

They represent many disciplines – there is a Colombian BMX rider, a Guatemalan sailor, an Estonian discus thrower and a South African table-tennis player – and all benefit from one-on-one time with the great runner; he may not know much about boxing, but he knows how to train and how to win.

Gebrselassie has wasted little time in preparing a programme for the boxer to follow, and the morning after he arrives from Bangkok Butdee has been invited to join his host for a jog round the plateau.

Gebrselassie sets off at a pace deliberately designed not to intimidate, but appearances can be deceptive.

We are 10,000ft above sea level, and for those unused to running at such heights the physical demands are amplified; after no more than a dozen paces the chest begins to feel as if it has been placed in a metal casket that is being hit repeatedly by a sledgehammer.

Within a hundred yards the lungs are burning, the ears screaming, the throat roaring. There simply doesn't seem to be enough oxygen to go around.

Gebrselassie, though, is blissfully unaffected. He skips over the ground, his tiny feet pecking at the earth, apparently barely touching the surface.

He has been running at altitude all his life, and his body has built up a natural resilience that gives him an advantage anywhere else he runs.

For Butdee, though, acclimatisation seems a long way off. After no more than half a mile he is gasping, barely able to look anyone in the eye.

"I go off now for a run," Gebrselassie says, raising his voice above the sound of wheezing. "While I"m gone, you do five more laps."

His diminutive frame quickly disappears from view into the surrounding woodland. The moment Gebrselassie is out of sight, Butdee shakes his head.

There is no way he is going to do any more physical activity this morning, he says. "It"s impossible. I cannot see how he can run here. He must be Superman."

Ninety minutes later – by which time Butdee has recovered his breath – Superman returns. He has run 18 miles, he says, up to the top of the adjacent mountain.

It is only just after 7.30am and he has already run further than most of us commute. Yet his brow is not even glistening, he looks so fresh he appears to have taken a taxi. "A good start," he grins. "Now, let's get on with the day."

Haile Gebrselassie was born to run. Brought up one of 10 children in the hills of Asala, 160 miles south of Addis, from the age of six he ran six miles to school and back every day.

That was in the dry season. When the rains came and he was no longer able to take a shortcut across a riverbed, it was 7½ miles.

His father, like everyone in the area, was a subsistence farmer who regarded running as a necessity, not a possible career choice.

But Haile, inspired by the achievements of his countryman Miruts Yifter, who won the Olympic 10,000m in 1980, grew obsessed – he stole his father"s transistor radio to listen to commentary of Yifter's Moscow win.

He was never too interested in school work, and Yifter opened his eyes to the possibilities of running professionally.

He won his first official race aged eight, ran his first marathon at 15, was selected for his region, then the national team, and at 18 was discovered by the Dutch former distance runner Jos Hermens, who remains his coach and agent.

In 1992, under Hermens"s tutelage, he announced his presence internationally by winning both the 5,000m and 10,000m in the World Junior Championships in Seoul, aged 19.

From then on he began to dominate the 10,000m, winning two Olympic titles and four World Championships (the first in 1993), and breaking 27 world records, despite having suffered all his life from asthma.

As he entered his thirties, he increased his distance and moved from the track on to the street, finishing first in four successive Berlin marathons (he set the current world record for the marathon, a time of two hours, three minutes and 59.28 seconds, in Berlin in 2008).

The apparent ease of his victories – always a grin as he crossed the finish line – turned him into the poster boy for pavement plodders everywhere: the man who made the most demanding of pursuits look effortless.

Not that it came without work. His weekly training encompassed more than 100 miles of hard running, fuelled by a colossal intake of grain, vegetables, fruit and lean meat, none of which appears to hang around on his entirely fat-free frame.

Then, last October, after limping out of the New York marathon when a build-up of fluid locked his right knee, he announced his retirement from the sport he had come to define.

Even for Superman, the marathon is physically unforgiving and he was now 37. It was time to move on, let someone else take his place. A couple of days later, though, like a jogging Sinatra, he rescinded the decision, telling the world he had been misunderstood.

"It was crazy," he says now. "I come home to Addis and everyone is crying. My kids, my father, my wife. I say, why are you crying? I only meant I was retiring from the race. I tell them, of course I run on. Now I want to win in London 2012."

The outcry in Addis was understandable. Gebrselassie is not merely renowned across his homeland for his athletic longevity, he is also his country"s finest ambassador, the man who puts his nation on the map every time he runs.

More to the point, wherever he runs, he always returns to his roots. After earning millions from his sport (his appearance fees for attending a city marathon start at $250,000), he has never sought to live in Monaco, Milan or Miami.

His home has always been Addis, these days in a sprawling marble palace he shares with his wife, Alem, and four children: daughters Eden, 13, Melat, 11, and Batiy, nine, and five-year-old son Nathan, known as Natty.

The house is in a suburb next to the forest that rings the city, so close to the wild that when he comes home late at night he sees hyenas rummaging through his dustbins.

After his morning run, Gebrselassie heads to his office on the eighth floor of the Alem Building (named after his wife).

His business empire employs some 600 people and his interests range from coffee (his beans, he insists, are the world's most flavoursome) to motor trading.

He has the sole licence to import Hyundai cars into this part of Africa, and about 35 brand new Korean hatchbacks are currently stored on his front drive while he waits for a showroom to be built.

He also runs a successful property business with Alem, which has financed the building of seven of Addis's tallest buildings. All of which has helped make him one of Ethiopia"s richest men.

"It is not my duty to spend my money in my country," he says, "but it is what I want to do. There is nowhere else I would like to invest."

His brother, Assefa, largely runs the businesses, but Haile is more than a figurehead, he makes decisions on a daily basis. And there is a philanthropic edge to his ambition.

He has built two primary schools in Ethiopia and is heavily involved with the Great Ethiopian Run, Africa's largest mass athletics event, which works with NGOs and the UN to inform people in his homeland about health matters and the importance of education.

"I love this country, it is amazing," he says. "But it is very poor. I have seen things few of my countrymen have. The first time I went on an aeroplane I couldn't "t work out how the lavatories worked up in the sky.

"When I went to a hotel in Europe, I was amazed by the luxury. The average income is 200aheadhere.DoyouthinkAmericanscouldliveon200 a head here. Do you think Americans could live on 200aheadhere.DoyouthinkAmericanscouldliveon200 a year? Impossible. But they do here. The Ethiopian people are incredible."

The affection he feels for his countrymen and women is reciprocated. Wherever he drives through the chaotic streets of Addis, people wave, smile, laugh.

Taxi drivers holler, traffic cops salute him. When he parks, a gaggle of schoolchildren surround the car, girls squealing at him as if he were a member of a boy band.

His presence seems to cheer everyone up. They all love him because his global success contrasts with the usual wider image of Ethiopia as a place hamstrung by debt and poverty.

Gebrselassie makes their country look good. So much so, not a day goes by when he is not pestered by those wanting him to do more than just put a spring in the collective step.

During the course of only one day with him, at least four people stop and ask when he is going to stop running and enter politics. Haile, they tell him, we need you to run the country like you run a marathon: properly.

"Yes, I believe we could do better," he says of his nation"s politicians. "I believe we can build on our character, I believe we can do more. But then I am very impatient.

"I have run my whole life on the clock. Now in business, I have to do things not tomorrow, not today, but yesterday. If I rule this country one day, I will want it to run with me. Very fast."

Passing time with Gebrselassie is an exhausting business. He does everything at breakneck pace. He has just completed a tower block in downtown Addis 18 months ahead of schedule, sometimes turning up on site in the middle of the night to encourage the night shift to work harder.

When he sits down to breakfast, he is standing up again before the first splash of coffee has hit his cup, dashing off to his next appointment, urging his guests to follow.

He drives us in his 4x4 to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church of St Mary in Entoto, to which he donated his Olympic gold medals. Set just under the mountain, in a eucalyptus forest (the trees were imported from Australia in the 1920s), this is a place of pilgrimage for many in Addis.

When we arrive, women in bare feet are prostrating themselves on its steps, howling out their devotion. It was here that he married Alem, his childhood sweetheart, in a ceremony that had thousands lining the streets to catch a glimpse of the couple.

It was here his children were christened. And it is here he comes to prepare psychologically for big races.

"Before I went to Atlanta and Sydney [where he won 10,000m gold in 1996 and 2000], I came to this church and prayed," he says, as the priest unlocks the safe where his medals are kept.

"I promised to give of my best, and that if I won I would give my medals to the church. When you promise something, you must fulfil it. These medals don"t belong to me. They belong to the church."

Gebrselassie is not suggesting there was anything divine in his success, but attributes it to more earthly reasons.

"I was successful because I worked harder than anyone else.

"That is what I want to tell this young athlete when he asks me for advice," he says, pointing to Butdee.

"You need three things to win: discipline, hard work and, before everything maybe, commitment. No one will make it without those three. Sport teaches you that.

"It is not enough just to win the race, it is how you handle the lessons, how you improve. Some athletes, after they have won something, because they are not disciplined, they don"t make the most of it."

Is it a question of being hungry?

"I am not hungry for success, I am hungry for running. I am disciplined. Sometimes when I meet people and they say, "What do I have to do to be like you?"

I say, "Look, sport has to come from inside." You can't look at someone and say, "I want to be like you." The desire has to be yours."

He takes the medals from their cases and threads them over Butdee"s neck. The boxer laughs and punches the air. Then he has his picture taken with them. "You will win one of these yourself one day, if you believe," Gebrselassie tells him. "And I will win another in London, too. These two are lonely. They need a friend."

Later, Butdee says that of all the things Gebrselassie did with him during his trip to Addis, the training, the motivational talk, the sight of his splendid house, it was wearing those medals that was the most inspirational moment. Yet Gebrselassie himself seems unmoved by the gongs.

"I"m not motivated by possessions or money," he says. "I just love running. I do lots of things, but nothing compares to running. Like real estate, once you have built a building there's nothing else to do, it's just collecting money.

"You import a car, then sell it, then import another: where is the excitement? With running, every day is different. Every run is different. When I run 10km on the treadmill, always I check the time. Sometimes it's 28 minutes something and I'm not happy. Then I run 27 something and I'm smiling. If the whole world ran, it would be a better place."

Is that what he would do, then, if he were ever to become his country"s leader: make sure that his entire cabinet joined him for his morning constitutional?

"No," he grins. "If I were prime minister, I would send everyone to school. Education is all. That is what I would love to do for this country: educate it."

It is quite a task. With 39 per cent of the population living below the internationally recognised poverty line, survival is more of a priority than schooling; fewer than 58 per cent of pupils make it into secondary education. Small wonder that no more than 40 per cent of 15-year-old girls are literate.

Gebrselassie would like the whole of Ethiopia"s youth to have some of the opportunities his wealth has brought his children, who attend the international school in Addis.

They get taken there in a Hyundai; there is no running six miles to lessons for his kids, which explains why none of them shares his pencil-thin physique (or indeed his love of athletics).

They speak American-accented English in the home and at night regale him with the stories and pictures they have produced at school.

He would love to be the man who delivers such an educational charge to his country. But the thing that holds him back from entering politics, he says, is that he fears he will lose his most singular advantage: his unequivocal popularity.

"My friend says to me: "Hey, Haile, if we choose you as our president, then I might have to kill you." I say, why?

He says, "Because you are an athlete, you are my friend. When you become a politician, it will change." So I say, but if you like me why do you want to kill me? He says, "because I hate every politician. So I will have to hate you." How crazy is that?"

He says it may yet happen, he may well answer the growing calls to leadership. Though he has much else to do first, from building a cinema and completing the hotel complex he is constructing in his home province to winning gold in London, a city whose marathon he has never conquered, despite three attempts.

To complete all he wishes to achieve, he says, every morning he will be up on Entoto before daybreak, running.

"I could not run my business without running. If I have a problem in my business, I don"t sleep on it, I go for a run. And by the time I have finished running, I have thought of a solution," he says. "For me it is very simple. I have to run. If I stop, I die."

Haile Gebrselassie is a mentor to the athletes of the G4S 4 teen programme, helping 14 young athletes achieve their dream to compete in the 2012 Olympics in London g4ssport.com