|
|
Article: Robert Cheruiyot - Defending champion's victories have allowed him to escape the despair of poverty in his homeland and reunite a splintered family
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- April 15, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2007 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
|
The world's top Marathon Man is asked whether he senses a divine
hand at work in all this. "The Almighty Father?" Robert Kipkoech
Cheruiyot asks, with his shy smile. "Always."
How else to explain how a man can come from destitution and
desperation to wealth and fulfillment in less than a decade? Or how
he can take a family that was scattered for years and bring it back
together?
One inspired day in Boston four years ago made it possible.
Cheruiyot was running with a pack of his Kenyan countrymen on a warm
and windy afternoon, 15 miles into the Marathon, when he decided that
the day was his. "OK, I will win this," he told himself, and loped
away in the Newton hills.
The $80,000 paycheck might ...