Three-time Olympic runner Abdi Abdirahman understands why people doubted him, and he doesn't hold it against them. He realizes spending a year and a half away from competition due to injuries made people think his best days as a runner were behind him.
But he definitely disagreed.
Abdirahman showed those doubters this month that he's not past his prime by qualifying for his fourth US Olympic team after navigating the most frustrating stretch of his career.
"Those people can eat their words," the 35-year-old Abdirahman said in a phone interview this week. "For me, they're just motivation. When they say I'm done, it just makes me work harder to prove the point to them I'm not done. They're my motivation."
Abdirahman's journey to a fourth Olympic berth has been an unlikely one full of twists and turns remarkable enough for the silver screen. When civil war broke out in Abdirahman's native Somalia in the early 1990s, he and his family fled as refugees to Kenya before receiving sponsorship to come to the United States.
Knowing barely a word of English, the family settled in Tucson, where Abdirahman still resides. After getting started late in his high school career as a runner at Tucson Magnet, he enrolled at Pima Community College and joined the cross country team.
It was in 1996 that Dave Murray, who coached in various track and field and cross country roles at the University of Arizona for 35 years, spotted Abdirahman. Murray was out with UA's cross country team in the foothills near Pima when he noticed Abdirahman running and approached him about coming to UA.
Murray, who retired from UA in 2002, but is still Abdirahman's personal coach, says Abdirahman was an average runner at best despite two state junior college championships at Pima, but he saw enough potential to eventually offer a full scholarship. The move was met with some skepticism, but Murray knew his family couldn’t afford the opportunity otherwise.
"I took a chance," Murray said. "I think even some of my own coaches said I was crazy to give a kid a full scholarship when you only have 12.6 scholarships and a male team of about 35 to 40 athletes."
The risk proved a good one, as Abdirahman became a two-time All-American, won a Pac-10 championship in cross country, was the conference's Cross Country Athlete of the Year in 1998 and the same year finished second in the men's 10,000-meters at the NCAA cross country championships.
"He worked as hard as anyone I coached, and we've had many great ones," Murray said. "That's one of the reasons he went from an average track runner in junior college to a major competitor at the college level and later on at the professional level."
After earning a degree at UA in 1998, Abdirahman landed a Nike sponsorship and in 2000 became a US citizen.
The 10,000 has always been Abdirahman's specialty. He ran it in the last three summer Olympics — with his highest finish of 10th at the 2000 Games in Sydney — and is a four-time US champion in the event. In 2008, he came about four seconds away from breaking the US record for the 10,000.
This year, however, Abdirahman qualified for the London Olympics in the marathon, placing third at the Olympic marathon trials in Houston on Jan. 14. He said the transition to the marathon was natural as he got older, and he actually attempted to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the event, but had to drop out around the 19-mile mark due to a hip injury.
That hip injury didn't prevent Abdirahman from running in the Olympics, but it was the start of a frustrating period of his career. The hip issue, which wasn't a major injury, lingered and made it difficult to train.
"I wasn't enjoying the training because it was so painful," Abdirahman said. "The first 10 or 15 minutes of training was so hard."
Making matters worse was the appearance of a stress reaction on his right femur. The stress reaction, though, still considered relatively minor, kept Abdirahman out of training for six months. Eventually, the continuous injuries got to him, but not for very long.
"There was a point when I said 'You know what? I've had enough,'" Abdirahman said. "I made three Olympic teams. I think I should just do something else. ... But there were people who said 'You're not ready yet. Just keep working hard.'"
Murray was among those people, constantly pushing one of his prized pupils to stay positive. But he wasn't the only one. Abdirahman cited his family and the Tucson community for keeping him going, as well as many people at UA who supported him and helped him recover at their facilities.
Abdirahman's injuries kept him away from competition for about a year and a half. The chatter in the running community, Murray said, was that Abdirahman was "over the hill." In his first few races back, Abdirahman says he was at the back of the pack, "just hanging on for dear life." But he slowly regained his form.
"There were some people who said, 'This guy has no chance of making the Olympic team,'" Abdirahman said. "They said, 'Oh, Abdi's done.' Even leading up to the Olympic trials, there were only a few people who believed in me. I was a dark horse."
Abdirahman had already won the 2011 USA 20 KM Championship in September, but the Olympic trials in Houston were the real test of how much he had left. He surprised the running world with his best marathon time since 2006. The winner of the trials, notably, was Mebrahtom Keflezighi, a UCLA alumnus whom Abdirahman beat for the Pac-10 cross country title in 1998.
Throughout the journey, Murray has been there with Abdirahman. That coaching consistency, Murray said, has been important to Abdirahman's sustained success. Through their long-term athletic relationship, the two have formed a bond so strong that Murray's grandchildren look at Abdirahman like a big brother.
"He's almost like my son," Murray said. "I know everything about him and what makes him tick."
Though his spot in the Olympics is secured, Abdirahman will also try to qualify in the 10,000 this June. He feels better about his chances to medal in the marathon, as the competition in the 10,000 is particularly strong right now and he may not qualify at all. Medaling, he believes, would be yet another way to prove his doubters wrong.
More than that, though, reaching the Olympics and giving everything he's got is Abdirahman's way of thanking the community that never lost faith in his ability.
"It's a way to say thank you for not giving up on me," Abdirahman said. "I don't want to just go there. I want to give 110 percent and hopefully get a medal."
