Abdi's World: The Black Cactus on Life, Running, and Fun by Myles Schrag & Abdi Abdirahman

Author:Myles Schrag & Abdi Abdirahman [Schrag, Myles & Abdirahman, Abdi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Sports, Personal Memoirs, Sports & Recreation, Running & Jogging
ISBN: 9781733188784
Google: zhxozgEACAAJ
Publisher: SOULSTICE PUB
Published: 2021-10-14T23:33:33.148928+00:00

Third Olympic Ring

Beijing

Everything the hosts did at the 2008 Olympics was over the top, and I was grateful to be part of it. Some of it didn’t make sense to me. It felt strange when the distance runners flew to Dalian for a day of training and they actually shut down the roads in a city of millions just for us to run a few miles. Ron Mann, the former Northern Arizona University coach then at Louisville, was our middle-distances coach, and it was fun to reconnect with him.

One of the most amazing experiences was the Opening Ceremonies. That is always a highlight of the Olympics, of course, but that night the entire American team was led into the quirky stadium known as the Bird’s Nest by 1500-meter runner Lopez Lomong.

When Lopez was just six years old growing up in Sudan, rebel soldiers took him from his family while they were at church. Getting help from some older boys who were also kidnapped, he literally had to run for his life to escape to a Kenyan refugee camp. Lopez was there for years as one of the “Lost Boys” of Sudan before being adopted by an American family just before 9/11, which shut down that refugee program. He was an NCAA champion at NAU and, a year before the Beijing Games, he became a U.S. citizen.

I could certainly relate to leaving my home country as a child because of civil war, finding a new life in Kenya and the United States, and getting help from strangers along the way. As part of the track team, I knew Lopez enough to know he was a great guy even beyond his incredible story, so it was easy for me to vote for him to be flag bearer. I was thrilled that so many more of the 588 athletes across all sports on the U.S. Olympic contingent agreed that he deserved to carry the Stars and Stripes into the Bird’s Nest.

I didn’t perform particularly well at the 2008 Olympics. I equaled my 15th place finish from 2004 with a time of 27:52.53. Maybe I kept training too hard after qualifying, rather than backing off. Maybe the emotions of the year finally caught up with me. Still, my first trip to China was a memorable experience. I had transitioned from sorrow to a renewed dedication to running, but I wasn’t sure where my future in the sport lay. The past two years, I had run faster and in more types of races than ever in my life. But I was now 31 years old. Maybe the roads were calling for good.

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