Samuel Wanjiru, who has died after falling from a balcony at his home aged 24, was Kenya’s first Olympic marathon champion; he took the gold medal at the Beijing Games in 2008, and his time of two hours, six minutes and 32 seconds, shaved nearly three minutes off the previous Olympic record set in 1984 by Carlos Lopes of Portugal.
Samuel Wanjiru after winning the gold medal for the marathon at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing Photo: GETTY
Wanjiru’s personal best time — two hours, five minutes and 10 seconds — came in the 2009 London Marathon. He also won the 2009 Chicago Marathon, which put him top of the 2008-09 World Marathon Majors rankings and earned him $500,000.
His victory at Chicago in 2010 — when he recorded the fastest time ever recorded in an American marathon — meant that he was the youngest runner to win four major marathon events.
Samuel Kamau Wanjiru was born in Kenya on November 10 1986, a member of the Kikuyu tribe. Brought up in poverty by his mother, Hannah, he dropped out of school at the age of 12. He had already caught the attention of Francis Kamau, a coach with the Mutual Fair Exchanges athletics club; and under the club’s auspices, Sammy finished third in the Kenya National Primary Athletics Championships 10,000m race when he was 14. Lack of money, however, prevented further progress, and Sammy returned to his home.
He was soon offered a place at the Mt Kenya High Altitude Training Camp in Nyeri, where he was spotted by Sunnichi Kobayashi, a Japanese athletics promoter based in Kenya.
In March 2002 Kobayashi arranged for the boy to move to Japan, where he was enrolled in Ikuei Gakuen High School in the northern city of Sendai.
Sammy later said: “My mother was very happy because she had no money to send me to high school. It changed my life.”
He learned to speak Japanese, developed a taste for sushi, and trained hard as an athlete, often running 12 miles a day. As a member of the high school’s athletics team, Sammy excelled at ekiden (a long-distance relay race) and went on to win major cross-country events. In 2005 he joined the Toyota Kyushu athletics team.
Wanjiru’s next stop was Europe. In 2005 he won the Rotterdam Half Marathon in a world record time. In March the following year he took the Fortis City-Pier-City Half Marathon at The Hague, in the Netherlands, with a time of 58:33, another world record (for that achievement he received $25,000, which he donated to a children’s home in Nyahururu where his mother worked).
In 2007, back in Japan, Wanjiru progressed to the full marathon, winning the Fukuoka marathon with a course record of 2:06:39. The following year he finished second in the London marathon before going on to win the gold medal in Beijing.
He attempted to defend his London marathon title in the 2010 London marathon, but retired in the middle of the race so as not to aggravate a knee injury. It was the first time in six marathons that he had failed to finish.
Wanjiru did not take part in this year’s race in London, perhaps owing to personal problems that suggested that his life might be beginning to unravel.
Last December he was charged in Kenya with threatening to kill his wife, Tereza Njeri, and with illegal possession of an AK-47 assault rifle. In February this year Tereza withdrew her accusation of attempted murder, saying that they had been reconciled. “I have come to tell the court that we have solved our differences. Our matters will be settled out of the courtrooms,” she said.
But Wanjiru was still due to appear in court — on May 23 — on the firearm charge. He had also suffered minor injuries in a car crash in January after he swerved to avoid an oncoming truck.
On May 15 Sammy Wanjiru fell from a balcony at his home in Nyahururu, in the Rift Valley 150 kilometres north-west of Nairobi, suffering fatal injuries. Local police said it appeared that Wanjiru had taken his own life after a row with his wife, who had unexpectedly returned home to find him entertaining another woman.
He is survived by his wife and their daughter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/sport-obituaries/8517467/Samuel-Wanjiru.html
He learned to speak Japanese, developed a taste for sushi, and trained hard as an athlete, often running 12 miles a day. As a member of the high school’s athletics team, Sammy excelled at ekiden (a long-distance relay race) and went on to win major cross-country events. In 2005 he joined the Toyota Kyushu athletics team.
Wanjiru’s next stop was Europe. In 2005 he won the Rotterdam Half Marathon in a world record time. In March the following year he took the Fortis City-Pier-City Half Marathon at The Hague, in the Netherlands, with a time of 58:33, another world record (for that achievement he received $25,000, which he donated to a children’s home in Nyahururu where his mother worked).
In 2007, back in Japan, Wanjiru progressed to the full marathon, winning the Fukuoka marathon with a course record of 2:06:39. The following year he finished second in the London marathon before going on to win the gold medal in Beijing.
He attempted to defend his London marathon title in the 2010 London marathon, but retired in the middle of the race so as not to aggravate a knee injury. It was the first time in six marathons that he had failed to finish.
Wanjiru did not take part in this year’s race in London, perhaps owing to personal problems that suggested that his life might be beginning to unravel.
Last December he was charged in Kenya with threatening to kill his wife, Tereza Njeri, and with illegal possession of an AK-47 assault rifle. In February this year Tereza withdrew her accusation of attempted murder, saying that they had been reconciled. “I have come to tell the court that we have solved our differences. Our matters will be settled out of the courtrooms,” she said.
But Wanjiru was still due to appear in court — on May 23 — on the firearm charge. He had also suffered minor injuries in a car crash in January after he swerved to avoid an oncoming truck.
On May 15 Sammy Wanjiru fell from a balcony at his home in Nyahururu, in the Rift Valley 150 kilometres north-west of Nairobi, suffering fatal injuries. Local police said it appeared that Wanjiru had taken his own life after a row with his wife, who had unexpectedly returned home to find him entertaining another woman.
He is survived by his wife and their daughter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/sport-obituaries/8517467/Samuel-Wanjiru.html
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