Tsepo Mathibelle, Wejo’s Athlete Of The Year In 2015, Gets Back-Page Profile In Wall Street Journal And Short Documentary Film On His Olympic Dream
by LetsRun.com
April 23, 2016
Wall Street Journal Back Page Yesterday
It turns out LetsRun.com wasn’t the only one impressed with Lesotho’s Tsepo Mathibelle. The unheralded 2:16 marathoner Mathibelle was LetsRun.com’s Weldon Johnson’s athlete of the year in 2015. Mathibelle, who turned heads at the World Championships marathon last year by breaking open the field mid-race before fading to finish 14th, got a full back-page profile in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, which revealed Mathibelle is being supported by Samsung as he trains for the Olympics and is in a documentary short film funded by Samsung, “A Fighting Chance” by Academy Award winner Morgan Neville, about Olympic hopefuls.
The WSJ’s Matthew Fetterman has the full update on Mathibelle here which was written as a result of Mathibelle being in New York City for the premiere of the film “A Fighting Chance” at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Samsung is sponsoring Mathibelle’s training for the Olympics. He may do a stint in Kenya before Rio. No word from the article on who is coaching him. Mathibelle did race the Daegu Marathon in South Korea earlier this month finishing 7th in a pr of 2:15.39.
2:15:39 is not the result fans of Mathibelle would have wanted but he reminded us in Beijing last year it’s not always about winning or losing, telling LetsRun.com, “I was determined to lead the race. I tried to push, I wasn’t thinking I could win the race… My plan was to lead to push hard, hard, hard… If they catch me, they catch me.”
*Full article on Mathibelle here from Matthew Futterman
Update: The whole film “A Fighting Chance” is embedded below and is also available on Vimeo.
A Fighting Chance from A Fighting Chance on Vimeo.