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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Fri Nov 05 2010 - 06:38:05 EST
The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION
Bairu's trek has taken him from schoolyard brawl to New York Marathon
By: Lori Ewing, The Canadian Press
Posted: 4/11/2010 4:20 PM
Simon Bairu has been on the run since a schoolyard scrap some 13 years
ago, an improbable journey that has taken him to the top of Canada's
track and field rankings.
On Sunday the Regina runner will line up alongside the world's best as
a favourite in the New York City Marathon.
To think it all started with a punch thrown in a football game.
Bairu was a hot-headed 14-year-old when he wound up in the principal's
office for the umpteenth time after clubbing his own quarterback in a
game of touch football.
"I was upset that he wasn't passing me the ball," Bairu said, laughing
at how silly it sounds. "He made a comment that 'I would pass you the
ball if you knew how to catch.' It got really heated and I punched him
the face. That was just the way my thought process worked then."
Bairu was a scrawny, scrappy teen whose outbursts regularly landed him
in trouble. Teachers would call his father Yehdego to pick him up — a
fate more frightening, Bairu said, than any visit to the principal.
Bairu faced suspension and a call to his father after the football
fracas, but teacher Steve Wihak said he could avoid both if he signed
up for the track team.
"He's a really strict father, and that was the understanding that we
had, if I did the track thing (Wihak) wouldn't call my dad," Bairu
said.
Bairu made his track debut wearing a pair of Air Jordans, finishing
second in an 800-metre race. He was passed at the finish line as he
ran, celebrating too soon with his arms in the air. His dad told him:
"Bairus don't finish second."
Bairu has made a habit of winning, capturing a record seven Canadian
cross-country championships and two NCAA cross-country titles with the
University of Wisconsin. He finished 13th last year at the world
cross-country championships, won the 2010 Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon,
and in May ran 27 minutes 23.63 seconds to shatter the Canadian 10,000
metre record.
The 27-year-old will make his marathon debut in New York, and is the
favourite to break Jerome Drayton's 35-year-old Canadian record.
There's no guarantee the mark will fall Sunday. The hilly, winding New
York course that begins at the foot of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge
and snakes through all five boroughs doesn't favour fast times.
Runners estimate the course adds two to three minutes.
But Bairu definitely has the elusive record — Drayton covered the
gruelling 42.195-kilometre distance in two hours 10.09 seconds in 1975
in Japan — in his sights.
"I feel confident that down the road I will eventually get the
Canadian record but for my first marathon, it would be foolish to
focus (Sunday) on a record that's lasted as long as it has," Bairu
said.
Bairu's trek actually began in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he was born
to Ethiopian mother Abeba and Eritrean father. His parents had fled to
Saudi Arabia to escape a civil war in Africa that had raged for
decades. Bairu was four when his family, including two siblings,
settled in Regina after a brief stay in Athens.
Small for his age, Bairu's dad made early attempts to beef him up,
with protein shakes and a weightlifting program, but to no avail. He
grew to all of five feet eight and 128 pounds — the perfect build for
a distance runner.
His 21-year-old brother Philon is six feet and 205 pounds, and a
linebacker with the Regina Thunder of the Canadian Junior Football
League.
Bairu graduated from his Air Jordan-wearing days to join a track club
in high school under coach Steve Gersten, and from there attended
Wisconsin on a full scholarship, leading the Badgers to an NCAA
cross-country title in 2005. When his Wisconsin coach Jerry Schumacher
left in 2008 to work as a coach of the Nike Oregon Project, Bairu
moved to Portland with him.
Bairu is being touted as a top-five finisher Sunday, remarkable
considering he's never run a marathon.
Canadian distance coach Thelma Wright isn't surprised. She points to
Bairu's finish at the world cross-country championships, when he was
first non-African across the line. (While he is of African descent,
there's no comparing the harsh Regina winters).
"He has the discipline and mental toughness for the marathon," she
said. "He has huge desire and huge respect for the sport, huge
determination and drive to be the best he can be."
Wright believes Drayton's record isn't long for the books.
"Good old Jerome Drayton, he put that standard out there and it's been
a carrot for a while but I think now we've got some real talent," she
said. "Simon is very focused on getting a new Canadian record and he's
definitely capable."
Art Boileau was Canada's last great marathoner, competing in the 1984
and '88 Olympics and finishing second in the 1986 Boston Marathon.
Bairu is part of a Canadian resurgence in the long-distance event. For
the first time in recent memory Canada could have three men in the
marathon at the 2012 London Olympics.
Reid Coolsaet of Guelph, Ont., achieved the Olympic marathon standard
in September in Toronto, while his training partner Eric Gillis
narrowly missed the mark.
Bairu will jostle for position Sunday with a stacked field that
includes world-record holder Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia and
American Meb Keflezighi, the defending champion. The winner takes home
US$130,000.
The New York event has been a crash course in celebrity for the
Canadian. Bairu has been writing a blog on the race for the New York
Times. He marvelled earlier this week about attending his first news
conference.
He and his training partners, Americans Tim Nelson and Shalane
Flanagan, were spending the final days before the race in a quiet
hotel in upstate New York.
"Just to get away from everything," Bairu said. "It can be a bit
overwhelming with all the hoopla and everything."
He'll be back in New York on Friday, and said when he steps up to the
line, after coming so far, he'll think about all the people that have
helped him get there.
He wrote in his blog: "I hope they can take pride and comfort in
knowing that their work, though often met with reluctance and
aggression by my young and destructive self, was not in vain."
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