New York, New York –In the oven-like heat of the 2012 Boston Marathon eventual champion Wesley Korir found himself way off the pace just hoping to survive as the race passed through the infamous hills of Newton. But using his head as much as his legs he did more than survive; the University of Louisville grad from Kenya ran down every over eager competitor to win the biggest race of his life. Then, kneeling in stunned disbelief at the finish line, he pondered the improbability of it all.
“I asked the volunteer to pinch me,” Wesley recalled. “Did I really win the Boston Marathon?”
Improbable is an apt word for 30 year-old Korir, maybe even unique. In the world of elite Kenyan running there isn’t anyone remotely like him. For that matter, there’s nobody quite like him outside Kenya either.
While fellow New York City Marathon contenders like Geoffrey Mutai, the 2011 champion and course record holder, was training monastically for Sunday’s 43rd ING New York City Marathon in Kapng’etuny, some 55 miles outside Eldoret, Kenya, Wesley Korir was making a weekly five hour commute by car (or 30 minutes by air flight) from Eldoret to the nation’s capital to take his place in the Kenyan parliament to fight for the elimination of poverty and to stamp out rampant government corruption. Not your average Kenyan runner, to say the least. (more…)
