While Ethiopia has been best known for all its success at longer distances and the marathon, Kalkidan Gezahegne is at the forefront of Ethiopia's recent success in the middle distances. Like Olympic and World Champion Meseret Defar, and unlike most of her national teammates, Kalkidan is an Addis Ababa native and it's there that she began training with the established clubs to become one of the best milers in the world.

In her first major test outside of Ethiopia, Kalkidan won the silver medal over 1500m at the 2008 IAAF World Junior Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland. A year later, Kalkidan dropped more than seven seconds off her 1500m lifetime best, a performance that earned her a spot representing Ethiopia at the 2009 IAAF World Championships in Berlin, where the eighteen year old qualified for the final (the youngest in the field by five years).

Fewer than six months after her first appearance at the World Championships, Kalkidan began rewriting the age group record books. At the GE Galan in Stockholm, she broke the World Junior Indoor Record for 1500m, and ten days later, ran 4:24.10 in Birmingham to obliterate the thirty year old World Junior best for the mile. Kalkidan capped off her winter at the IAAF World Indoor Championships, where she upset the defending champion to win her first international gold medal.