Interview with Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot

By Stuart Calderwood

If he wasn’t the least outspoken of athletes, Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot might make a legitimate claim to being the world’s best male marathoner. He’ll almost certainly soon have a more concrete claim: He holds an all-but-insurmountable lead in the inaugural two-year World Marathon Majors Series standings. He won the 2006 Boston Marathon in a course-record 2:07:14, then won the 2006 LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon under bizarre and near-disastrous circumstances: He slipped, possibly on an advertising logo strip, in his final stride and suffered a mild concussion, bleeding inside his skull, and a small bruise to the front of his brain. Doctors predicted a complete recovery, and he gave credence to that with his repeat Boston win this past April in wet, windy conditions to virtually clinch the WMM title and its $500,000 purse.

It couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy. Cheruiyot was effectively orphaned as a child, abandoned by his parents and taken in by relatives who treated him as a servant and laborer. After eight years of this, he walked 30 miles to another town and the home of a brother, who helped him despite his own meager circumstances. As Cheruiyot fought near-suicidal depression, a lucky meeting with the driver for a local running camp led to his joining a training group, progressing through the Kenyan ranks, and finally achieving unimaginable successes and earnings in the world’s biggest distance races.

MensRacing met Cheruiyot, along with Hendrick Ramaala and Abdi Abdirahman, at a news conference before the NYC Half-Marathon Presented by NIKE, which was three days away.

MensRacing.com: How’s your head? That’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen happen in a race.

Robert Cheruiyot [putting a hand to the back of his head]: You know, I can’t remember that. Falling, or afterward. I remember being in the hospital…I had to ask them if I won.

Abdi Abdirahman [who was fourth at Chicago]: I remember it! I watched the whole thing. We were all close together—it happened right in front of me.

MR [to Cheruiyot]: How do you feel for the half on Sunday?

RC: I’m glad to come to New York. I wanted to run this race last year, but I couldn’t come.

MR: Great job at Boston. Was that race as tough as it looked?

RC: It was so windy. No one [in the front pack] would go. Sometimes the wind was so hard, it felt like I couldn’t breathe.

MR: What made you decide to make a move?

RC: We waited and waited. One guy would push for a bit, then drop back, then push again, drop back…finally I just went.

MR: Congratulations on the World Marathon Majors. You’re running Chicago again this year, right?

RC: Yes. This half is at just the right time, two months before. It will let me see how I am doing. It starts early, right?

MR: Seven o’clock.

RC: [gesturing at Abdirahman, who was busy telling tall tales to a group of gullible reporters]: Did he run the marathon here last year?

MR: No—he just ran our national track championships, though.

RC: Did he run the 10K?

MR: Yes—he won it, so he made our team for the [IAAF Track & Field] World Championships.

RC: You know, there were four of us together here in the marathon two years ago—can you still remember that?

MR [taking offense]: Of course I remember. It was you, Meb Keflezighi, Paul Tergat, and him [points to Hendrick Ramaala]. You were all wearing identical Nike uniforms—light-blue shorts and white tops.

RC [smiling, nodding at Ramaala]: Yes, yes—that guy, he killed me.

Interview conducted August 2, 2007, and posted August 3, 2007.