Staples Center, the finish line and history in sight, Meb Keflezighi waved a small U.S. flag in his left hand. He pumped his right fist, held a hand to his ear, soaking up deafening applause along the downtown stretch of Saturday’s U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials.

“You’ve got to celebrate life,” he said.

Galen Rupp, 29, U.S. distance running’s newest star, won the men’s Trials in his first attempt at 26.2 miles, finishing in 2 hours, 11 minutes, 12 seconds. Running his 23rd marathon, Keflezighi, 40, placed second in 2:12:20.

The top three American men and women qualified for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in August in Brazil.


But it was Keflezighi — born in Eritrea, the pride of San Diego High — who set history. At 40 years, 284 days, he became the oldest American to qualify for the Olympics in the marathon.

So upon hitting the timing mat, the man best known simply as “Meb” spread his arms wide, crossed his chest then acted childish, flexing like the Incredible Hulk.

All 5-feet-5½, 125 pounds of him.

1 / 6 U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Marathon (Jonathan Moore / Getty Images) 2 / 6 U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Marathon (Joshua Blanchard / Getty Images) 3 / 6 Track & Field: U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials (Kirby Lee / Reuters Photo) 4 / 6 Track & Field: U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials (Andrew P. Scott / USA Today Sports) 5 / 6 U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Marathon (Jonathan Moore / Getty Images) 6 / 6 Track & Field: U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials (Andrew P. Scott / USA Today Sports)


Of Keflezighi’s feat at 40, running historian Ryan Lamppa said, “It’s borderline superhuman. It’s so atypical for athletes to stay motivated, maintain the drive, enjoy the training, show up on race day and deliver.

“That is a one-in-a-million type athlete. He has that intangible ‘it’ that people talk about, like (Michael) Jordan or (Wayne) Gretzky.”

When Keflezighi ran a 5-minute, 20-second mile as a seventh-grader at Roosevelt Junior High, a victory lap from the San Diego Zoo, his P.E. teacher told him, “One day, you’re going to the Olympics.”

The skinny 12-year-old went home that day and asked his father, “Dad, what are the Olympics?”


Keep in mind, Keflezighi was a refugee from East Africa who spoke little English, who didn’t see his first TV until he was 10 and looked behind the set, thinking that’s where the people on the screen were hiding.

Now he’s on his way to the Olympics for the fourth time.

A Mission Hills resident, married with three daughters, Keflezighi was motivated Saturday, in part, because his youngest daughter, 6-year-old Yohana, did not understand the magnitude of his accomplishments. That, and he believed that at 40, he could still compete with America’s best.

“You should not decay or fade away so drastically,” he said in the days leading up to the Trials.


It was a painful and emotional morning for Keflezighi. The temperature was 66 degrees at the start and would climb to 78, the heat baking off the Los Angeles blacktop. He did not feel good before the start.

“I’m old,” Keflezighi later joked. “It takes me longer to loosen up.”

Regarding the conditions, Hilltop High graduate Desiree Linden, who finished second and also qualified for Rio, said, “That was the toughest 26.2 miles ever.”

Keflezighi battled a left side cramp for the better part of the first 13 miles.


Near 16 miles, Tyler Pennel of Blowing Rock, N.C., pulled away from a pack of about 15 runners. Rupp and Keflezighi gave chase. The race was on.

By about 18 miles, Keflezighi and Rupp were alone. At one point, the two exchanged words, Keflezighi not caring for how close the track star was brushing beside him.

“It’s not a track,” Keflezighi said he told Rupp. “The road is open.”

Added Keflezighi, “It was not a very friendly conversation.”


By Mile 21, Rupp would pull away. Keflezighi held on to second, Jarod Ward, 27, of Provo, Utah, finishing third, 40 seconds back.

In the postrace news conference, a journalist noted Keflezighi’s down-the-stretch celebration and said she had never seen him so happy. Keep in mind, this is a man who has won the Boston Marathon, New York City Marathon and a silver medal at the 2004 Athens Games.

Keflezighi turned emotional, fighting back tears. He said he saw a Roosevelt Junior High teacher on the course. Former UCLA teammates cheered him on.

“I heard “USA! USA! Go, Meb, Go!” he said. “This was almost a homecoming.”


His heart was heavy at times. A woman who’s like a second mother to him is battling a serious health issue. A niece couldn’t make it because she’s battling pneumonia. A race director he’s close to has a son who has undergone heart surgery.

“Don’t take life for granted,” he said upon leaving the postrace stage.

Keflezighi’s legacy rests not in how fast he runs 26.2 miles — there have been 922 faster marathon performances than Keflezighi’s best of 2 hours, 8 minutes, 37 seconds — but in the magnitude of his biggest races.

By winning the silver medal on a humid afternoon in Athens in 2004, Keflezighi became the first American male since Frank Shorter in 1976 to medal in the marathon.


When Keflezighi won the New York City Marathon in 2009, he snapped a 27-year American drought at the event. And his poignant 2014 victory at Boston came not only one year after the bombings that killed three and wounded 264 but ended a 31-year run without an American winner.

“I think Meb is the greatest American marathoner ever,” said Lamppa.

Bill Rodgers won the Boston Marathon and New York City Marathon four times each, but did not face deep African fields in the late 1970s. Alberto Salazar won New York three times and Boston once. Frank Shorter won an Olympic gold and silver medal in the marathon but never won Boston or New York.

While he won Boston and New York just once, Keflezighi is the only person to win the United States’ two most prestigious marathons, plus an Olympic medal.


“His fame, his legacy is more than those three achievements,” said Lamppa. “They were milestones. They were historic. He broke long droughts for American male marathoners.”

The secret to his long-term success, Keflezighi said, are the little things, like routine and attention to detail. Before morning workouts he executes agility drills for seven minutes, stretches for eight minutes, does running-form drills for seven minutes, then comes the meat of the workout.

To simulate Saturday’s heat he jogged in sweat pants indoors on a treadmill. He slept in a separate bedroom when his three daughters were younger, his wife, Yordanos, answering the middle-of-the-night cries.

He has employed the same coach, Hoover High graduate Bob Larsen, since his freshman year at UCLA. His brother, Hawi, serves as his manager.


That 12-year-old boy who asked his father what the Olympics were? Months after winning the Boston Marathon, Keflezighi was invited to a formal dinner at the White House and was seated at the same table as President Barack Obama.

“Uh-oh,” said Obama, “here comes the fast guy.”

President Jimmy Carter, captain of the Naval Academy cross country team, shook Keflezighi’s hand and needled the sitting president, saying to Meb, “You’re the most popular guy here.”

Keflezighi broke down a second time during Saturday’s news conference. Runners were asked their thoughts about what Keflezighi had accomplished at 40. Women’s Trials winner Amy Cragg remembered how Keflezighi counseled her when they trained in Mammoth.


“Meb is an incredible athlete,” said Cragg, “and that pales in comparison to how wonderful a person he is.”

Added Linden, “Meb is what we strive to be, an amazing model to look up to. Meb is a hero.”

Sitting on a stage, Keflezighi balled his right hand into a fist and pounded his chest.

Norcross is a freelance writer.