Mary Keitany: from shoeless prodigy to top of the world
![Mary Keitany: from shoeless prodigy to top of the world Mary Keitany: from shoeless prodigy to top of the world](https://citizentv.obs.af-south-1.myhuaweicloud.com/8171/conversions/Mary-Keitany-og_image.jpg)
Kenya's Mary Keitany celebrates after breaking the women's only world record at London Marathon in 2017. (PHOTO/Reuters)
Kenya’s Mary Keitany, the holder of the world marathon
record in a women-only race, generously agreed to donate some of her racing kit
to the World Athletics Heritage Collection following her retirement in
September.
Since the beginning of December, Keitany’s singlet,
shorts and shoes from her fourth and final New York City Marathon victory in
2018 have been on display in the 3D virtual Museum of World Athletics (MOWA).
'If I don’t do this, then what?'
Hailing from Baringo County, a province immediately to
the east of the focal point for Kenyan running in Eldoret, there are many
well-known and successful athletes who come from the area, but Keitany’s
impoverished childhood made it initially unlikely that she was going to join
their number.
She elaborated on her tough childhood in a lengthy
interview with The New York Times in 2019 – details of which are only precised
here – and described living in a home without electricity or any other basic
amenities, as well as having no shoes for much of her childhood.
Her household tasks as a very young child included
walking several kilometres to a nearby river to haul pails of water home for
cooking and cleaning.
Keitany’s parents, both struggling subsistence
farmers, were unable to afford even the modest school fees for her to continue
her education from her mid-teens so, at the age of 15, to help support her
parents and five siblings, she left and went to work as a live-in maid almost
20 kilometres away, caring for three infants and sometimes not seeing her
family for several months at a time.
“It was not an easy job,” reflected Keitany. “But I
was getting money to give to my parents. I was thinking, ‘If I don’t do this,
then what?’”
She returned to school after two years when a relative
was able to help financially and Keitany started to attend the National Hidden
Talents Academy near Nairobi, a community-based secondary school that primarily
assists orphaned and vulnerable children.
The school had a strong emphasis on physical
education, which continues to this day, and it has produced several Kenyan
internationals in a variety of sports. Keitany’s precocious talent as a runner,
which had been evident in her early teens prior to the enforced two-year
hiatus, came to the fore.
After graduating from high school in her early 20s,
Keitany was then talent-spotted in local races and assisted by the Kenyan
international runner Lenah Cheruiyot, who was seventh in the 2002 World
Athletics Half Marathon Championships, and during the early part of 2006 she
took a gamble and became a full-time runner.
After eight months of hard training and sharing a
cramped one-bedroom house with three other runners, Keitany made her first
overseas trip and caused a minor sensation by winning the relatively low-key
Sevilla-Los Palacios Half Marathon in southern Spain – not to be confused with
the much better known EDP Sevilla Half Marathon – by over two minutes in
1:09:06, a course record that exists to this day ahead of the 2021 edition on
19 December.
The words ‘unknown Kenyan’ are too often used to hide a lack of research or information but in this instance, it was a most appropriate phrase and, amid rumours at the time that the course was short because of Keitany’s super-quick time on the circuit, it bought her to the attention of both athletics aficionados and race promoters alike.
In the first nine months of 2007, Keitany proved that her debut international race had been no fluke as she rattled off another five half marathon victories in six outings at races in Portugal, Spain and France, also reducing her best to 1:08:36.
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