Date: Monday, 01 July 2024
Weini Kelati at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Track & Field - Day 9/Getty ImagesTen years ago, Weini Kelati arrived in Eugene, Oregon, for the World Junior Championships and never went home.
As a 17-year-old coming from her native Eritrea, she had ambitious plans to run a strong 3,000 meters, but she was also intent on staying in the U.S. to escape the political oppression of the Eritrean government. She finished eighth in the race that day, but wound up defecting from her home country by connecting with family members in Virginia, where her running career started in earnest.
On Saturday night in Eugene, she reached her next big goal of becoming a U.S. Olympian by winning the U.S. Olympic Trials 10,000 meters in 31:41.07.
“It’s crazy because I get pretty emotional every time I come here to run because I have all the memories of when I left my family, but not this year,” Kelati said. “I just wanted to come out here, focus on my race, and just perform well. This year I was working mentally just to get prepared, and it worked out. I can’t really process it all now, but I will soon. Right now, I just can’t believe it.”
Collegiate star Parker Valby of the University of Florida turned in her best race of the trials, snatching up second place (31:41.56) in an all-out sprint that ended in a photo finish with Nike pro Karissa Schweizer (31:41.56). Kelati is the only U.S. runner in the field to have already surpassed the Olympic-qualifying standard, but Valby and Schweizer have not and will have to wait to see if they’ll earn Olympic team berths based on their world rankings.
Parker Valby, Weini Kelati, and Karissa Schweizer pose with their medals in front of a replica of the Eiffel Tower after competing in the women’s 10,000-meter final at the U.S. Olympic Trials (Photo: Christian Petersen/Getty Images)U.S. Olympian.
Kelati became a naturalized U.S. citizen three years ago this month, but she also dropped out of the 10,000 meters at the U.S. Olympic Trials later in same month because she wasn’t yet prepared to run at that level. Three more years of hard work under coach Stephen Haas has helped her become one of the best distance runners in the U.S.
Before the Olympic Trials, she was the second-ranked U.S. runner in the 5,000 and first in the 10,000, but she opted to only run the 10,000 to give her the best shot at qualifying.
Although she’s able to talk and text with her family regularly, she has only seen her mom once since she arrived in the U.S. in 2014. She was able to reunite with her mom for the first time in eight years during a three-week vacation to Uganda in 2022. She still hopes to see other family members in the future, but she doesn’t know when or how it can happen, given that she can’t return to Eritrea. But for now, she continues to savor her weekly phone calls, the conversations of which are like a lifeline of reassurance and serve as powerful motivation to keep moving forward.
“I’ve been telling them one day I’m going to go to Olympics,” Kelati said. “It’s been hard here without my family, but I’m so proud of myself that I was able to come here and make the team. I can’t want to share it with them.”
Weini Kelati at the US Olympic trials
