Thu, Jul 03, 2008
 Former UA runner Abdi Abdirahman is an established star in the 10K but will attempt to qualify for the Olympic marathon on Saturday. James s. wood / arizona daily star
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Opinion by Greg Hansen: Chasing precious medalTucsonan turns gaze to Olympic marathon trials
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 11.02.2007
You run for a living. You run so well that you can afford to buy a house with a pool and a 64-inch TV screen in a gated community.
You run so fast and so far that you can buy a $50,000 SUV that has four TV screens as part of the extras package. Your name has such cachet in the running community you have been invited to the office of Nike CEO Phil Knight, who puts you on payroll. Six figures? Easy.
You have earned as much as $380,000 for a single race, the 2006 Chicago Marathon, and you always put aside $1,000 a month to send to a feed-the-needy program in East Africa.
"I can probably buy anything I want to buy," Tucsonan Abdi Abdirahman says. "I have been to Asia and Europe and Australia. In December, I am going to go to Hawaii. I haven't been there. I want to see Hawaii. Running has allowed me to do things I never thought possible."
You ask Abdi what he remembers most about his wonderful and fully unplanned and unexpected journey as one of America's leading distance runners. He is not the emotional type. He is, rather, upbeat and social. His coach, former UA track and field coach Dave Murray, endearingly describes Abdirahman as "a 30-year-old teenager."
Abdi gets emotional anyway.
He talks not about the 2000 Sydney Olympics or the 2004 Athens Olympics, or about any of his USA national championships. Instead, he talks about the night he arrived in Tucson — he thinks it was October 1989 — and it was dark.
"Do you know that Burger King at Campbell and Speedway?" he asks. "Our whole family went into the Burger King that night. The food was so good. I remember how excited I was to live in America."
Mohammed and Halima Abdirahman and their six children began their lives together in Somalia. He was an engineer for an oil company until civil unrest forced them to flee to the east coast of Kenya. They appealed to the Conoco-Phillips company to sponsor their immigration to the United States and finally, after years of anxious waiting, they arrived in Tucson, where Mohammed's brother once lived.
"I couldn't speak English, only a few words, and none of our children spoke English," said Halima, now a kindergarten teacher in the Seattle School District. "Tucson was a new world to us. It made us welcome and gave us a great opportunity. We love Tucson."
Abdi attended Tucson High School but did not run on the Badgers track team. He did not run at all. In the mid-1990s, he went to a UA track meet to watch All-American Martin Keino, a fellow East African and a multiple-NCAA champion. While there, Abdi saw a runner from Central Arizona College being lapped by many in the 5,000-meter field.
"That's a true story," Abdi says now. "I saw that race and said, 'I can run faster than him.' I went to Pima College a few days later and asked if I could run for their team. It's a true story. That's how it started."
His mother marveled at the change running triggered in her son. He lost 15 pounds from his 5-foot-9-inch frame. A happy personality emerged. His confidence flowed.
"America changed our lives as a family, and running changed Abdi's life," she says. "Oh my goodness, he has done so well. We are so proud that I can't put it into words."
Abdi won at PCC and then he won at the UA. League titles, national titles. But he stayed in school (he is two classes shy of a degree in retail and consumer sciences) just in case running was short-term. One summer he worked at Mervyn's, 9 to 5. The day-to-day grind motivated him to pursue running as a career. As a pro, he has won three USA outdoor 10,000 meter championships. In August, at the 2007 World Championships, he was No. 7 overall.
He has become so well known in the running world that a track-related Web site is staging a contest to create a logo for his self-appointed nickname: the Black Cactus.
"We've had about 100 logos so far," he says, grinning. "We will soon pick one. The Black Cactus. I love it. I get good vibes from Tucson. I was eating breakfast at The Good Egg the other day and someone came up to me and said, 'Abdi, good luck in the Olympic trials.' I'm running for Tucson as much as I'm running for myself."
Abdirahman is among the favorites in Saturday's USA Olympic men's marathon trials in Central Park. The first three finishers make the 2008 Beijing Olympics roster. One race. One chance.
If this seems particularly risky, it is. Abdirahman has run just three marathons in his career. Yes, he can still fall back on his trusty 10,000 meter at June's U.S. Olympic trials, but he has a much better chance of contending for an Olympic marathon medal.
"I've told Abdi for 10 years that the marathon will be his best event," said Murray, who has remained his coach after Abdi left the UA in 1999. "He was always reluctant, saying he didn't want to run 26 miles. But now he understands. At 10K, he is a great American runner but just another guy in the world scene. In the marathon, he is a threat to win a medal."
On Jan. 28, 2000, Abdirahman became a U.S. citizen. By then, his family had moved to Houston so it meant that Murray accompanied his former star runner to the emotional ceremony in downtown Tucson.
"That is the day my life changed," Abdi says. "Dave Murray helped me every step of the way in becoming a U.S. citizen. I am an American. My family lived as refugees in Kenya, and when we came from America we had chance to have a better life for ourselves. My brother has fought in Iraq. We have been blessed by God."
A previous family commitment will keep Murray from attending in New York City on Saturday, but Abdirahman's agent, Ray Flynn of Nashville, Tenn., and Abdi's frequent Tucson running partner, reigning 1,500 and 5,000 world champion Bernard Lagat, will be in Central Park to offer moral support.
As with any elite athlete, Abdirahman's biological clock is ticking. Some insist this is his last, best chance to win an Olympic medal. It makes him laugh.
"I can run in the 2012 Olympics and maybe the 2016 Olympics," he says. "I take care of my body and plan to run until I'm 37 or 38. But I'm going to run in New York like there is no tomorrow."
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