Wanjiru’s leap to fame

Had Samuel Wanjiru been alive today, and in the imperious form he was in four years ago, Kenyans would be already assured of one Olympic medal even before the Games start in London on July 27.

Wanjiru, who died anywhere between 11.30pm and midday of last May 15, earned Kenya its first every Olympic marathon gold medal in Beijing, China, in 2008.

But by the time of his death, he was fighting many wars, some from the domestic front, more worrying was his on and off return to a good physical fitness, which was occasioned by his hedonistic lifestyle which he acquired as a result of mega bucks he earned after his Olympic gold.

Wanjiru commanded appearance fees of anywhere between Sh15 million and Sh20 million after his historic triumph in the Chinese city.

Add this to the World Marathon Majors, which he won two times in a row, each earning him approximately Sh40 million, and you find a recipe for disaster if one was not prepared early for such big money lifestyle.

His death left a nation in deep shock. More shocking were revelations that emerged after he allegedly jumped from his balcony at his Nyahururu’s Muthaiga mansion.

From a humble upbringing, in which the young Wanjiru’s literally struggled to put food on the table, his story was a real rags to riches story.He had a burning ambition to make it big in athletics. Stephen Ndung’u, one of the people who helped him attain his childhood ambition traces the young Wanjiru’s ascent from rags to riches to the day his mother Hannah Wanjiku and his uncle John Mwihia took the young Wanjiru to him in Nyeri where Ndung’u ran an athletics camp for talented athletes from around Mt Kenya region.

humble background

“He was very young, 13 years old, and always wanted to become a professional athlete and wanted to follow in the footsteps of great men like John Ngugi, Paul Tergat, Douglas Wakiihuri and Paul Tergat, just to mention a few,” Ndung’u told us this week from his base in London.

“He came from a humble background and did not believe in limitations especially in the athletics field,” said Ndung’u.
“He once told me that he would get to the hall of fame and sure enough, he did. He wanted to compete against people like (Ethiopia’s) Haile Gebrselassie.

“He was one of the most co-operative, obedient and respectful young man who was full of energy and had a great determination to make it big in athletics,” says Ndung’u.

Ndung’u regrets that by the time of his death, Wanjiru was to support his Mt Kenya Talent Development Centre, where he honed his career at a tender age between 1998 and 2000.This account of humility is corroborated by Sport Illustrated in its March issue.

“By all accounts Wanjiru was beloved among his teammates for his humility, and he led a stable life in team housing,” it reported.

But how one would forget such a humble background the moment he broke into the mega money bracket and live almost a reckless lifestyle, to the point of self-destruction, is what astounded Nyahururu residents and Kenyans in general.
A close friend of his once confided that Nyahururu people knew a disaster was lurking in the horizon for Wanjiru and his family. “It was a question of when and not if,” said the friend.

For one string that runs through Wanjiru’s narrative is that is huge spending, binge drinking, womanising and road accidents after those escapades.

His problems were exarcerbated by the intense dislike between his mother Hannah Wanjiku and his wife Trizza Njeri, whom he met in 2005 when he returned from Japan, where he lived prior to 2008.

“Njeri became Wanjiru’s wife in September ‘05, when she moved into a house he had paid for. It was the same month that he first broke the world half-marathon record, for which he reportedly earned $100,000,” reported Sports Illustrated.
The respected US magazine went on: “Hannah Wanjiru and Njeri disliked each other from the start. Over the next two years Sammy built the two women spacious houses inside fortress-like compounds within 150 yards of each other on a dirt road in Nyahururu Town.

“But each woman looked askance at anything Sammy bought the other. Each felt that the other wanted to control his money.
According to Sammy’s friends, relatives and business associates, they were both right.

mediate disputes

“None of Sammy’s expenditures went unscrutinised by his wife or his mother. Not the $25,000 he donated to a children’s home in Nyahururu after he broke the world half-marathon record for the third time, in March 2007. Not the beautiful parlour he financed for Njeri, which went bust.

“According to Wanjiru’s coaches, his mother would even complain when he was home and they used his cars to get him and his training partners to and from workouts. When Wanjiru was in Japan, he often called his uncle John Kamau and asked him to mediate disputes between his mother and wife.

“The differences were all about money,” Kamau says. “It was not about anything else.” “In early 2008, Wanjiru returned home from Japan to stay. Later that year, after his dramatic Olympic victory, he began commanding high appearance fees whenever he ran. The money deepened the rift between his mother and his wife.

“All the while, Wanjiru was busily spending it or giving it away. He enjoyed the trappings of wealth. He commissioned a local artist to paint a giant, gaudy wildlife mural on one of the walls surrounding his house.

And the boy who could lose hours playing with a toy car made from scrap was now a man who paid cash for a fleet of Toyota’s best — Land Cruiser, Mark X, RAV4 — that depreciated rapidly on the crater-pocked Kenyan roads.

“He also never refused people who needed money. After a workout Wanjiru would buy 25 runners lunch, and he paid for a Nissan for use by athletes who had no other way to travel to races.

One runner named Ken Kasmili says Wanjiru began paying his son’s school fees so that Kasmili could work fewer hours and focus on training.

“Wanjiru was an economy unto himself. And almost everything he bought — cars, land, houses — was wildly overpriced. When he was in Nyahururu he frequented the pubs. His friends point out almost every large bar in town as “one of his favourite places,” and locals would text one another when they spotted him out drinking, sending the alert that it was a good time to sell. Suddenly Wanjiru, at the bar, would be buying $900 plots of land for $3,000.

He did, though, make some fruitful purchases, the American journal reported. With the help of James Mwangi, a local veterinarian who became a close friend, Wanjiru purchased a plot of land and built a dairy farm that in its prime sustained 15 cows and produced 55 gallons of milk a day. But the runner never liked to haggle with people over money, and he did not bargain at all when he was drunk.

For the Bird Nest Flats apartment complex he was building in the more prosperous town of Nakuru, “he probably spent 10 times the cost,” says Ndegwa Wahome, the lawyer who handled the paperwork for Wanjiru’s transactions.

“Some of the people working there took so much of the materials that they built their own houses.”“In front of the compound where Wanjiru was found fatally injured there is still a patch of dead grass. It’s where people pitched tent or put down blankets so they could bombard him with business opportunities whenever he came or went.

“In 2009, Wanjiru set course records in both the London (2:05:10) and Chicago (2:05:41) marathons. He also started dating Mary Wacera, a runner he met at the Nyahururu track,” reported the journal.

“They could talk to each other about Beijing, where Wacera won bronze in the 5,000 meters at the ‘06 world junior championships. She and Wanjiru started going to and from training together, and he didn’t mind occasionally slowing the pace of a recovery run so they could run together and talk.

“As a promising athlete, Wacera never felt the need to ask Wanjiru for money, which endeared her to Wanjiru’s mother. Wacera also did not complain about Wanjiru’s late nights out, which his friends say often included other women.

slowing pace

“In December 2009, Wacera and Wanjiru were married. There was an actual ceremony, which Wanjiru had not had with Tereziah Njeri, who by that time had borne Wanjiru two children.

(Having more than one wife is traditional in Kenya, albeit increasingly rare.) “I had no problem with (Njeri),” Wacera says, “but she hated me so much.” (Njeri has talked to media outlets but did not answer repeated calls from Sports Illustrated.) “Wanjiru rented a house for Wacera right between the homes of his mother and Njeri, on that same dirt road.

“But his money supply soon began to dwindle. Mwangi, the veterinarian, was with Wanjiru once when Njeri showed up and dressed down her husband in front of his friends for not giving her more money for the children. “How can I live like this?” Mwangi recalls Wanjiru saying.

To allay Njeri’s complaints, Wanjiru had Mwangi help her open a pharmacy in the centre of Nyahururu. The royal blue metal doors of Njewan Chemist opened for business in March 2010. But, Mwangi says, Njeri failed to replenish the drugs, and the doors closed by December.

“Even when he escaped the bickering women, Wanjiru could not find solitude. Ngatia, his physiotherapist, recalls that by 2010 the runner was never alone, even during treatment sessions. “There were always cousins or friends around,” Ngatia says, people who lived off Wanjiru. His benders expanded to include the daytime. He would push tables together at the Jimrock Club in town and lose himself in Kikuyu pop music.

He was once so swarmed at a bar that Kinuthia tried to swat people away by telling them that Sammy was no longer buying.
But Sammy was always buying. In one stupor he bought a Range Rover from a fair-weather friend for $145,000, nearly a 100 per cent markup.

...to be continued on Monday