Catherine Ndereba is one of the most inspiring and celebrated athletes in the world. She is a two-time Olympic and multiple marathon champion, notably breaking the world record in the 2001 Chicago Olympics. She was named Sportswoman of the Year in both 2004 and 2005. In 2005, she was awarded the Order of the Golden Warrior (OGW) for her remarkable achievements in athletics.
To walk through Catherine Ndereba’s life story is to begin to appreciate the struggles, perils, obstacles, and mental and emotional demands placed on the once wiry teenager who hoped to emerge from Kenya’s crowded field of wannabes to become a great athlete.
Now in her forties, Ndereba’s love for athletics blossomed while she was a student at Ngorano High School in Nyeri County. Her teachers recognised her talent and encouraged her to take up track and cross-country running. But her dream nearly came to an abrupt end as her first major challenge after high school was finding a place to nurture her talent. She even considered staying in school longer to continue taking part in athletics because she did not want to let go of her running talent.
Ndereba’s dream was to emulate her father, a long-distance runner who, however, never made it to the national stage. Unfortunately, there were no more organised competitions for her and it seemed her dream was about to die – until her coach intervened.
The coach arranged for her to move into a camp where she could live, train and take part in local athletics events. Then scouts from the Kenya Prisons Service spotted her and persuaded her to join the service as an employee. Soon after, she enrolled in the prisons training college in Ruiru on the outskirts of Nairobi.
In 1994, Stephen Mwaniki, a sprints coach at the Kenya Prisons Service, saw her potential and invited her to join the team. Her entry into the team assured her of competitive racing ahead, and a chance to prove her mettle among the best long-distance runners in Kenya and the world.
Still little-known, the young Ndereba burst onto the scene in 1994, forcing her way onto the sports pages when she upstaged Hellen Chepng’eno, the then reigning world cross-country champion, during that year’s national prisons championships at Nyayo National Stadium in Nairobi.
“I will never forget that race. I couldn’t imagine I had beaten a world champion. You see, I was a nobody in athletics at the time,” she says.
After her win, she fully expected athletics authorities to take notice of her and even invite her to the national cross-country team. After all, she had met all the qualifying times and even beaten the best in the country. But nothing happened. It appeared athletics officials were not yet convinced enough of her talent.
“I was disappointed and cried a lot in private,” she says. “But I trod on resolutely, hoping to run as part of the national team one day.” She was soon running a few marathon races in Asia and Europe, but not yet for the national athletics team. Questions were raised but never answered.
“I felt hurt that I could be excluded from the team for no good reason. I tried to seek answers but I couldn’t find any.”
Ndereba decided to concentrate on her training, knowing that she would soon be too good to be ignored any more. She knew her day would come. She took part in several road races outside the country, winning most of them. By 1996, she was ranked second on the United States of America Track and Field’s World Running Rankings.
By 1999, she had almost given up on ever being included in the national cross-country team. It was time to move on to other issues. She and her husband, Antony Maina, had had a daughter in 1997, and she decided to concentrate on motherhood, her family and her job at Kenya Prisons.
During that time, she got wind of an American promoter, Lisa Beth Buster, who was looking for Kenyan athletes to take part in races in the US. With encouragement from her coach, Ndereba signed up with the promoter. She was ready for a new direction in her athletics career and decided to switch to marathons.
Her manager entered her in the Boston Marathon. It was her toughest race ever. She led for most of the time and at one point it looked like she would beat defending champion Fatuma Roba of Ethiopia.
By the 40km mark, however, her body gave in. She had to stop for water, her strength almost all gone. It was by sheer willpower, and encouragement from a teammate, that she resumed the race and aimed for the finish line.
Surprisingly, Ndereba finished sixth overall. It was baptism by fire. She had learnt her lesson. Winning a full marathon was no walk in the park. She would have to put in a lot more training and be prepared to endure pain during the race itself.
The following year, 2000, she was back in Boston, much wiser and more prepared to take on the race. She won easily this time, and repeated the feat in 2001 before dropping to second in 2002. She got her act together and won again in 2004 and 2005. Her victories earned her the moniker ‘Catherine the Great,’ which stuck fast in racing circles.
Through it all, she says, she stayed true to her Christian faith, always thanking God first after every win.
In the Chicago Marathon of 2001, Ndereba set a new women’s marathon world record of 2 hours, 18.47 minutes. Her time the previous year was 2:21.33. She knew she had the will to break the world record, but it never occurred to her that she could actually go on to do it. She had been training towards the feat, but was still stunned when it finally happened. So was the rest of the world. She was finally on the world map.
And at last, Kenyan athletics officials took note and included her in the 2003 World Athletics Championships team in Paris and the Athens Olympics Games in 2004.
Ndereba did not let them down, winning the marathon gold in the Paris World Championships in 2003. This was the first time that a Kenyan female athlete had won the marathon at a major world event.
The following year, she won the marathon silver medal in the Athens Olympic Games. That same year, she also won the Boston Marathon. She then won the silver marathon medal in the Helsinki World Athletics Championships in 2005, and took her fourth Boston crown in the same year.
In 2006, she won two races – the Osaka Marathon and the Bogota Half-Marathon in Colombia. She went on to win the gold in the World Championships in 2007, but settled for silver in the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Her performances for the country were sterling, and she attributes her victories over the years to her never-say-die spirit; her belief that she could always do better in the next race.
Ndereba may be retired from representing her country in international meetings, but the superintendent at the Nairobi West Prison still spends many hours training daily to prepare for the few races she still runs. She usually gets six months’ leave from official duty each year for her athletics pursuits.
She finished third in a 2012 Beijing meet and took part in two other races in Asia that year. In 2015, she took part in her first full marathon in three years and finished seventh in Japan.
As far as Ndereba is concerned, the sky is the limit.
Words of Wisdom
- “I used to say, ‘Today I am not good, tomorrow I will be better.’ That was my prayer. I knew one day, one time, I would be a champion.”
- “There is always next time.”
- “Finishing the race counts just as much as winning.