Run Free Training
Marathon Highlight: Run Free Athlete Chirine Njeim
Scenes from Chirine's latest race in Eugene Oregon, attempting to qualify for her fifth Olympic Team. Chirine Njeim is one of 29 women in history to compete in both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games; and the only athlete in history to compete in Alpine Skiing and a Track event (Marathon). At age 3 she started skiing with a mindset “to go as fast as possible.” She moved to France to train full time at age 12, and then moved to Salt Lake City for high school and college. As a child growing up in Beirut, she remembers being mesmerized and inspired watching Italian ski racer Alberto Tomba on TV. She has other memories of falling asleep with her siblings in the windowless hallway of her home as bombs fell nearby. She says that “Lebanon is a very beautiful place, but we’ve had our difficulties.” Between 2000 and 2010, Chirine was repetitively tested. She competed at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics at age 16, shortly after having overcome an ACL tear. She struggled with anorexia, spent a month in the ICU with double pneumonia, and was a caretaker for her boyfriend as he suffered terminal cancer. She also earned her degree, became an All-American, and competed in 2 more Olympic Games (Torino and Vancouver). In 2015, she crossed the finish line of the Houston Marathon in 2:44:19 to qualify for her fourth Olympic Games (Rio De Janeiro). At that time, she had only been running for two years. This time around, Chirine has enlisted two-time US Olympic Marathoner Ryan Hall.
“There is something incredibly powerful about being an example to young girls in Lebanon and all over the world who are being told that they cannot do something they want to do, because they can. I’m living proof of that.”
