09/25/2025
When Emmanuel Wanyonyi tells his story, he does not begin with medals or bright stadium lights.
He begins with cattle.
And a debt he never imagined at thirteen years old.
“I was paid two hundred shillings a month to herd cows,” he recalled, his voice steady. “But before the month ended, my mother would already have borrowed food from the shop. By the time I was supposed to be paid, I owed five hundred.”
The irony wasn’t lost on him. A boy working hard in the fields, only to end up poorer than he began.
His journey started in Kitalale, Kitale. Four cattle. Three hundred and fifty shillings a month. He dropped out of school, vanished for weeks, yet no one asked where he had gone. While watching the animals, he scavenged maize left behind in harvested fields, selling a few cobs to stash away coins.
“By then,” he said, “nikawa k**a raia. I was like a grown man.”
But work was slippery. Sometimes the pay was too little, sometimes nothing at all. In Kitale town, he earned a promise of a thousand shillings. At the end of the month—silence.
“I walked away with nothing.”
By 2016, in Bungoma, a thought struck him like thunder: How long can I keep herding cattle? He decided it would be his last year. At two thousand shillings a month, he saved carefully and built a small flat-roofed house back home. “I thought school had failed me, so I bought a jembe. I dug other people’s farms with my mother. Whatever we earned, we bought food.”
That was survival. Then fate arrived in the shape of a friend with running shoes.
“Kibe walked past my home one morning,” Wanyonyi remembered. “I stopped him. I said, ‘Those shoes—what are they for?’ He laughed, told me they were for running. He had three pairs. I begged to borrow one. He thought I was joking.”
The next day, they went to the field. Wanyonyi’s legs burned. Pain stabbed him.
“But I told myself—if I rest, it will hurt more. So I ran harder.”
The village thought he had gone mad. He trained in school fields at dusk while pupils played games. Some laughed, some pitied. He ignored them.
In 2017, he fell sick, paused, then came back stronger. He begged teachers at a local primary school to let him run for them. They said, “Only if you enroll as a pupil.” So a boy who had left school in Class 3 suddenly reappeared in Class 7, squeezed into a borrowed uniform. He guessed his way through exams but never ranked last.
His peers mocked him.
“Read this word on my shirt—Hazard,” one neighbor teased. Wanyonyi could barely read, but neither could the boy mocking him. Years later, that same neighbor cannot answer his texts.
By 2018, Wanyonyi was running at national level. His goal was clear. He met the principal of Kosirai Secondary who said, “No matter what you score in KCPE, you’ll join us. You belong here.”
At Kosirai, reality struck again. Academically, he struggled. He and his friends studied through the night, only to score an E. Emmanuel asked them, “Do you see any hope here?” They laughed. He chose training instead. Four in the morning, he was on the track. When teachers demanded his homework, he shrugged: “Stima ilienda.” They beat him, but he kept running.
Then came a turning point: an 800m race, a meeting with Olympic champion Janet Jepkosgei, and an introduction to coach Claudio Berardelli. Claudio eyed him suspiciously.
“Can this boy even run?” he asked his assistant.
“Yes,” Hillary Lelei answered firmly. “He can run.”
That answer changed everything. Wanyonyi joined Claudio’s camp, chasing a dream most thought impossible. By 2021, he stood at the national trials for the World U20 championships. This time, Claudio believed—not fully, but enough.
“Seventy percent,” the coach said. “Seventy percent I trust him.”
From a herdboy buried in debt, to a boy in borrowed shoes chasing pain, to a teenager who guessed exams but never came last—Emmanuel Wanyonyi had turned stubbornness into destiny.
And he was only just beginning.
Never despise humble beginnings.
Wanyonyi is now holds several Gold medals in various Athletics World Championships.
Copied from: Kirema
