It was May 8 at the Southeast Asian Games being held in Phonm Penh, Cambodia. The Cambodian long-distance runner, Bou Samnang, came last in the 5,000 meter event, a poor performance which nevertheless earned her praise for her tenacity, when nothing forced her to continue running.
>> Drôme: a 29-year-old man from Isère runs a marathon in reverse in 3h25, world record broken
Nothing obliged her, firstly because she was ill, very weak, because she was badly anemic. And then because his trainer himself advised him not to start. But now, it was happening in Cambodia, and she was the only Cambodian to be able to take the start. So she didn’t want to give up.
Waterspouts on the stadium
She lined up, sped off and, after a kilometer, began to falter, letting the others go further and further ahead. After 17 minutes, Vietnamese Thi Oanh Nguyen crossed the finish line, closely followed by all the competitors. All, except Bou Samnang, so far away that the others had time to greet the public, to parade with their flags in front of the photographers, and above all to see a sudden and totally Dantesque storm.
Within seconds, waterspouts fell on the stadium, completely flooding the track, track on which Samnang continued to run, alone, a spectral figure in this heavy curtain of rain, slow, grimacing in pain, shoes floundering in three centimeters of water.
In life, whether you go fast or slow, you can reach your destination no matter what, so let’s not give up, always try to do our best.
Bou SamnangCambodian long-distance runner
She continued, until crossing the finish line six minutes late, in tears, but to the applause of the whole stadium. Sometimes, there are key moments, where everything that we have gone through before, for years, takes on its meaning in a very reduced space-time of a few minutes. Bou Samnang says she thought back to her childhood, athletics sessions at school, when she ran on clay and had only one pair of shoes. She thought of her father who died recently, and then she thought of the history of Cambodia, her country.
So many things that allowed her to hold on and become, in spite of herself, a local icon, receiving congratulations from all sides, even those of the King of Cambodia himself. She is twenty years old and promises “to do better in the future“, in other words to win.”But I wanted to show peopleshe confided to l’AFP, that in life, whether you go fast or slow, you can reach your destination no matter what, so let’s not give up, always try to do our best.“
