'Heart of a Champion': the Unyielding Drive of Habtom Samuel

VERONA, Wis. — It’s November 23, 2024, and no one would mistake it for any other time of year at Zimmer Championship Course.

The early morning chill and dampness from melted snow that blanketed the course 48 hours prior to NCAA Cross Country Championships are at odds with the jittery energy of over 8,000 in attendance, spilling up against the barriers at every possible vantage point to watch a dramatic men’s 10K race hurtling towards its climax.

The first man to bound around the corner – Harvard’s Graham Blanks – receives a raucous applause from the expansive crowd as he crosses the finish line first for his second individual NCAA title in as many years. After studying the topography of the course, Blanks had used the rolling hills to his tactical advantage late to pull away from the pack and none could reel him in as he became only the 12th man in NCAA history to win individual titles back-to-back.

Interestingly enough, the crowd’s volume only increases for the second-place finisher – Habtom Samuel, the Eritrean sophomore and reigning outdoor 10K champion from New Mexico – as he comes down the stretch just behind, nearly closing the gap in the final 200 meters while fending off a late challenge down the stretch from Furman’s Dylan Schubert. 

Schubert uses the last of his energy to take the No. 2 position briefly before Samuel immediately responds, surging around and past him just before the NCAA logo that marks 100 meters to go before leaving him well behind.

But truth be told, it’s not the commanding overtake that energizes the crowd.  It’s the fact that Samuel has one shoe on.

With blood visible on both feet, Samuel points at his shoeless foot and pumps his fist triumphantly before crossing the line and immediately embracing Blanks, with whom he had become friends in competition in their multiple go-rounds in the last year.

𝑨 𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒆 𝑳𝒐𝒃𝒐 𝒏𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒒𝒖𝒊𝒕𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 🐺

And @HabtomSamuel31 is as true of a Lobo as one can be. #GoLobos | #WeAreNM pic.twitter.com/IMpfv12Dom

— New Mexico XC/T&F (@UNMLoboXCTF) November 23, 2024

After getting “spiked” (struck by the sharp spikes on the bottom of other competitors’ shoes) multiple times on both feet and losing his left shoe in the process halfway through the race, Samuel ran the next 5 kilometers without altering his pace. With open wounds on both feet and all the complications of running with one bare foot in the frigid northern weather, he had to expend extra energy just to stay in contention with a front pack that immediately attempted to drop him when he first lost his shoe. 

“At first my mind was not really good … my shoe is off, so what can I do? And I know the guys are really fast … but my coaches are everywhere saying ‘you can do this, just keep trying your best.’

“So I said, ‘Yes, I’ll try my best.”

So Habtom outkicked them all regardless, putting down the third-fastest closing 1K split of the entire field to come within two seconds of actually winning it all. He needed four stitches after the fact and could’ve sustained much worse damage had the wet conditions not softened the grassy surface.

The crowd knows that Graham Blanks has just done something that puts him in rarefied air among NCAA distance runners all-time. But they also just watched Samuel do the unthinkable in a completely different way.

“I’m happy I finished the same as last year, but at the same time I’m also not really happy because this time was really a perfect time to be a champion,” Samuel said after the race.

 “… Just not my day today. But I’m so happy to finish runner-up.”

True, he had only matched his finish from 2023 in his first NCAA Championships, finishing second to the same man in the process. But there was something distinctly elevated about the achievement this time. A runner-up – impressive as the feat was, especially considering the increasing amount of high-level talent – rarely got this much fanfare.

The prior season’s performance put him on the map, but the race he ran in Madison amplified the legacy of Samuel’s character in a way few are able to do within the confines of competition. He now had something imbued within his legacy that will never be taken away from him – the same way a trophy can’t.

By some amalgam of misfortune and poeticism, the unrelenting will of a 21-year-old that had defeated every obstacle between his inconceivable dream and the finish line at his feet was impossible to ignore.

Habtom had become the man who nearly won it all with one shoe.

No expert could have humanly predicted that Samuel would lose a shoe and fight all the way to the finish regardless, but there was something still unsurprising about the feat to those who already had seen his previous heroics. When it flew off, there was little doubt that he’d remain in the race.

Exactly 12 months prior, he had finished as runner-up to Blanks at NCAA’s on a brutal Virginia course that broke the wills of the vast majority of competitors, solidifying himself as a national distance contender after rising to further prominence with each passing race in his debut cross country season. In August of 2023, he was a relative unknown, but by November, he was a widely favored title contender.

Such is the life of Habtom, where a meteoric rise to worldwide athletic notoriety feels more like the world’s merely catching on late. 

In the months since that first national championship race at Panorama Farms, Samuel finished the 2023-24 academic year with four All-American awards on the track oval, capped off by a dramatic comeback to win the outdoor 10,000m Title in June after taking a fall and hitting the deck with two laps remaining. 

Habtom Samuel has won a lot of races a lot of ways. Tonight he won an @ncaatrackfield Championship — and the first for the Lobos since 2019 — with 𝗚𝗿𝗶𝘁.

Nothing quite like this.#GoLobos pic.twitter.com/2NO11KruS6

— New Mexico XC/T&F (@UNMLoboXCTF) June 6, 2024

The final conflict in the archetypal hero’s journey – the denouement of a year of close calls and near brushes with immortality. If he had bested Blanks and won the cross country title in his first try in 2023, would it have felt the same to see Samuel’s desperate closing dash after picking himself up off the track seven months later?

As a witness to each of those races, ESPN’s John Anderson was noticing a flair for the dramatic.

After finishing the race in Madison, a freshly-stitched-up Habtom used crutches to reach the mic for a post-race interview with the ESPN broadcast crew. Anderson – who first interviewed him after he fell and recovered to win that outdoor 10,000m title in Eugene – spoke up first.

“Buddy, we gotta quit meeting like this,” he said. “What was it this time?”

The day prior, Anderson had stopped by on-site shakeouts to catch up with Habtom as part of his premeet preparations, still compelled by his showing in Eugene and the memorable interview that followed. There he learned that Habtom had fallen in Reno at Mountain Regionals a week prior and was in considerable pain even as he pushed all of his teammates into the top 10 by the 6K mark before recovering to finish second behind Texas Tech’s Solomon Kipchoge by mere seconds. So this time around, the probability might have been more shocking than the gutsiness of the performance itself.  Samuel couldn’t help but take a moment to sheepishly point his eyes at the ground and laugh before collecting his thoughts.

“I don’t know… someone steps on me and my shoe is off right at the 5K mark,” Samuel said. “So I don’t have a choice – I’m just running barefoot.”

“This guy’s 𝐭𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐚𝐬 𝐧𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐬”

After racing to a runner-up finish without a shoe for half the race, Habtom Samuel chats with John Anderson about one of the grittiest finishes we’ve ever seen in an NCAA Championship race 🐺 pic.twitter.com/3ZU2Mtwy2z

— New Mexico XC/T&F (@UNMLoboXCTF) November 23, 2024

This belies the reality that he did, in fact, have a choice. He could’ve retrieved his shoe, simply accepting tactical defeat and disappointment rather than physical pain with risk of injury. He could’ve retired completely, which many have done in far less dire straits. Kipchoge – the same man who had held Samuel off late in Reno – didn’t even start the race that day for undisclosed reasons.

But the competitive fire that drives Habtom Samuel Keleta rejects the possibility of giving anything but his best. Excuses do little for him – the fear of failure does not penetrate his calculating tactical mind. He knew he was objectively better on that rainy Saturday in Madison than he was 12 months prior in Virginia, and he refused to let that be pried from his grip if he still had legs to run with.

It was the same way he refused to let the outdoor 10,000m title – his best event, at the peak of his first year of training – be taken from him in Eugene back in June even after he had to pick himself up from among the bodies piled up on the track, surging ahead to pass the rest of the field for his first championship. 

“The other guys, maybe they’re scared or tired – they’re not really running fast,” Habtom said when reminiscing on the moments after that collision sent him to the deck. “I closed the gap easily.”

At that singular point in time, it was a perfect time to be a champion.

This time around in Madison, sheer willpower came up 1.7 seconds short. But Habtom’s roar at the finish line was less a celebration of replicating his same finish from last year than it was a celebration of still being able to prove to himself what he believed coming in.

All obstacles – including the unintended, unforeseen and extraneous – be damned.

And when it comes to obstacles, the story of Habtom Samuel has seen a plethora of them come and go. 

Growing up in a village outside of Keren, Eritrea, Samuel’s initial love was soccer. Given what we know now about his abilities, the image of him zipping up and down the field comes to mind freely.

“I played soccer – just as a normal kid, not like a professional or anything – but I run so fast, you know,” Habtom says, eliciting some laughs. “I played defense but I’d go all over the field and attack … some people saw me and thought, ‘maybe he can run really good.’”

Habtom walked seven kilometers to school and seven kilometers back every day.

“Maybe that’s what made me strong – my body was always active even when I was little.”

Samuel’s father was one of the most crucial proponents that pushed him to seek out an education in the United States. For most international athletes, that’s far from unheard of – the recent influx of Kenyan nationals into the upper stratospheres of collegiate distance running is evidence enough of the mutual benefit the dynamic is built on. Collegiate programs get eminently talented international athletes, while the athletes in turn receive world-class training while mastering English and earning an American education.

“I know some people who changed their life because of the sport,” Samuel said. 

Ethiopian nationals have been far less common among the collegiate ranks than their neighbors to the south, even though Ethiopia boasts a population of 123.38 million to Kenya’s 53.04 million and shares a similar running-oriented culture with a comparable amount of young talent that is produced yearly. The two nations have combined for 35 of the last 36 World Athletics Cross Country Team Championships and 50% of medalists in the 5,000m, 10,000m and marathon events at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

And Eritrea, for all its cultural and socioeconomic similarities to Ethiopia – whom it shares over 1,000 kilometers of border with along with a similar elevation – has produced far fewer collegiate runners in the past. But this is for one primary reason, one that Samuel understood from the beginning.

If he wanted to leave, he’d have to do it his own way.

The United Nations has extensive documentation of human rights crises in Eritrea. Its government remains one of the world’s most repressive, subjecting its population to widespread forced labor and military conscription while imposing restrictions on personal liberties and restricting independent scrutiny by international monitors.

Eritrea remains a one-man dictatorship under President Isaias Afewerki, with no legislature, no independent civil society organizations or media outlets, and no independent judiciary. The only media available is state-sponsored. Elections have never been held in the country since it gained independence in 1993, and the government has never implemented the 1997 constitution guaranteeing civil rights and limiting executive power.

Mass roundups and prolonged arbitrary arrests and detentions without trial or appeal remain common. Prisoners – held in inhumane conditions – often do not know why they are being detained. Relatives are seldom informed of prisoners’ whereabouts, sometimes learning of their fate only when a body is returned.

 At least tens of thousands of Eritrean refugees have fled the country, many to Ethiopia – although the complete number is unclear. One UN Special Rapporteur Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker reported 96,000 refugees in 2021, noting no progress in human rights improvements.

“The country lacks rule of law, a constitution and an independent judiciary to enforce the protection of and respect for human rights,” Babiker said at that time.

When he traveled internationally for track competitions, Habtom never had physical possession of his passport – It was merely given to him before security and customs and taken back thereafter. There was no way for him to leave the country by his own volition without it.

Samuel intended to follow the path of former Lobo legend Weini Kelati, who was also born in Eritrea and claimed asylum in the United States in July 2014 before dominating state and national level competitions while attending Heritage High School in Leesburg, Virginia. She chose to compete at UNM over multiple power track and field programs and became the most decorated Lobo cross country and track athlete in history with 13 All-American honors and a pair of national titles. She set six new UNM program records across indoor and outdoor and after being granted citizenship she competed for the United States in her Olympic debut in the Paris Women’s 10,000m, placing sixth. 

Samuel first attempted to secure asylum in the same manner in the same city in July of 2022 by missing his flight back.

He wasn’t alone in that desire. That same weekend at Oregon22, two Cuban athletes successfully defected: Javelin competitor Yiselena Ballar Rojas and Yaimé Pérez.

Samuel laughs when shown a release from the Eritrean State Department with a mugshot of him below the word “MISSING”.

“I was not missing,” he says with a wry smile, belying the fact that he undertook the risk of being imprisoned and brutalized by his own government for what he had attempted to do. 

Even back then, fear could never supersede his will to improve his life, and he knew he would get another chance to try again.

He finally did in the spring of 2023, turning around and hurrying out of the security gate of a busy Sydney airport with his passport in hand before catching a ride with a friend he had made that week. Looking back, he disputes the idea that he truly had to “run for it,” citing the chaos of multiple national teams pouring in from that week’s competition that made it easy to slip away without drawing attention. 

In the three months following, Samuel laid concrete every morning to be able to buy a plane ticket to Albuquerque, biking and taking a bus to get to work each day while the family of a UNM athlete from the area took him in. 

It was arduous work, but there was a destination in his sights. A pathway to improving the lives of everyone he loved and a promise of a place that could shelter the dream he’d just risked everything to chase.

It’s November 22, 2024 – the day before Habtom’s fateful run at NCAA’s in Madison. He – along with his chaperones, Gauson and team SID Connor Gilbert – stand waiting in the UW clubhouse for the pre-championship press conference to which Habtom was one of three athletes invited along with UNC’s Parker Wolfe and Harvard’s Graham Blanks. 

It’s rare that all of these athletes are available in front of national media at the same time, and the first question is for Habtom.

“You achieved the Olympic qualifying standard in March last year, but didn’t compete at the Olympics,” a reporter says. “Could you explain why you chose not to compete?”

And in the moment, this press conference proved to be higher-stakes for Habtom than either of the other two young men at that table could imagine. Nothing Wolfe or Blanks could say at that table could risk harm to their families or threaten their abilities to ever come home and see them. But for Samuel, the way he approached his answer mattered infinitely for those exact reasons. 

Regardless, he chose the truth.

“I actually was preparing for the Olympics … my preparation looked really good, and because of politics – because I [came] here my own way to run in the NCAA when I got the chance from New Mexico when they gave me the scholarship,” Habtom said.

“I stayed in Australia for three months and I got the visa and I came here my own way. That’s the reason they kicked me out from the team. But it’s okay – it’s happening, it’s life, so I’m enjoying running here at the NCAA level.”

This was news to the sporting world. When Samuel had originally been rejected by the Eritrean federation, they provided no explanation, even though his time ranked by far as the best in the nation and among the best in the world. Simply an apology that he would not be on the team.

But Habtom had just laid bare the true reason why he wasn’t in Paris: retribution. Allowing Samuel to compete would make the government look weak, setting a precedent that talented athletes could have their cake and eat it too – flee the country but still compete under the Eritrean flag.

“Olympics are the highest level – I’m still dreaming of being an Olympian. But it’s fine – I’m here today, enjoying running with some really good guys.”

When Samuel says that running is his life, it feels like a throwaway phrase to those who haven’t digested the complexities of how he got to this point. Most collegiate runners of varying levels – in the scope of their youth, largely – feel the same. It’s the sole ideation that occupies the vast majority of their waking thoughts by virtue of the time it consumes, regardless of its comparable weight compared to the more pressing forces of life.

But what Habtom means is that running is the vehicle by which he transformed his life. It’s the sole thing that gave him the courage to make a radical decision to leave everything behind for that very reason. It opened the door to where he is now — a place he could have never imagined being without it — with a means to permanently alter the trajectory of his family’s lives.

It’s June 28, 2023.

Darren Gauson just found out he got the job – he would be the next Head Coach of a New Mexico Cross Country / Track & Field program that had evolved into a distance powerhouse over the past two decades, winning two women’s cross championships in 2015 and 2017 in the process. 

The No. 1 order of business? Making sure Habtom Samuel was still going to be there.

“It was a complete shot in the dark whether we’d have him or not,” said Gauson, who took the job at UNM after an eight-year stint at Bradley. “We honestly had no idea until we called him and he said that he was already enrolled.”

The Eritrean-born distance star had been recruited by Joe Franklin before his departure for Louisville but never considered going anywhere else after he left. His visa papers limited his ability to change his choice of school on such a short timeline anyways.

“And now, he might be the greatest of all time,” Franklin jocularly sighs in a parking lot in Eugene at 2024 Outdoor Championships after catching up with the UNM staff. 

A generous parting gift, to be sure.

By the time his father began encouraging him to use his running talent to seek an education, Habtom had already heard of Weini Keilati, a fellow Eritrean national who claimed asylum in the United States in July 2014 before dominating state and national level competitions while attending Heritage High School in Leesburg, Virginia. 

Perhaps by association, the mold of a champion and the mold of a Lobo had become one and the same to him. Little did he know that the legacy he would build in Albuquerque would need no comparisons or priors to be appreciated, even 12 months later.

It’s September 22, 2023. The Lobo men’s cross country squad is about to make its debut in earnest against nationally-ranked competition at the Roy Griak Invitational in Minneapolis. They haven’t received a single vote in the two USTFCCCA Coaches’ Polls that have been released and were picked to finish sixth in the Mountain West Preseason poll.

But Gauson knew he had something better than that. Behind Samuel were two Kenyan freshmen – Evans Kiplagat and Lukas Kiprop – who could compete near the front of the pack in nearly any field and two solid point-scorers in All-MW returner Jonathan Carmin and Florida State transfer Samuel Field that could keep them competitive in the team score.

Habtom did not disappoint, putting down the fastest winning time at Griak since 2011 – when Lawi Lalang of Arizona finished in 23:15.5 – and the second-fastest in the event’s 37-year history in beating the second-place finisher by 24 seconds to become UNM’s first-ever Griak champ. He stayed with the pack in position for the top spot the entire race, holding on to the No. 1 spot for the final 3 kilometers with Kiplagat and Kiprop just behind him.

“That’s when I knew we had something here,” Gauson said. “I mean, we definitely knew we had something before, but sometimes you have to see it to believe it.

The natural gifts are evident, even if they’re not the sum of what has gotten him here. Habtom makes running look far easier than it is – a soccer player in childhood, he was encouraged to take up running by coaches that watched him zip across all corners of the field endlessly without fatiguing. He’s well-suited to the newest generation of cushy super shoes with a bouncy yet low-impact stride, absorbing the stresses and forces on the body that distance running demands without impacting his gait. Even his late-race kicks are succinct and efficient, expending his remaining stores of energy methodically — there is nothing he doesn’t take into account.

“Even if I had to start from square one and build someone’s running form, I couldn’t make anything more perfect than his,” said his athletic trainer, Elliott Crynes. “He’s the most efficient, smooth runner I’ve seen.

“Foot strike’s perfect, arm movement’s perfect – all in all, he is just a well-rounded, efficient running machine.”

“It’s unreal,” said teammate Osaze Demund as he watched Samuel lap the field at the 5,000m at 2024 MW Indoor Championships. “He runs like he’s got moon boots on.”

It’s March 16, 2024. Samuel just crossed the finish line in a stunning 26:53.84 at Sound Running’s THE TEN – a non-NCAA meet designed to produce Olympic qualifying times with primarily professionals – for the new No. 2 time in NCAA history, blowing past the previous UNM record by more than a minute and punching his ticket to Paris for this summer’s Olympics. He was one of just two collegians along with NAU’s Nico Young in a field of 30, finishing fifth among them.

For perspective, the fastest men’s 10,000m time in the nation in each of the previous five seasons:

• 2023: 27:57.47, Charlie Hicks, Stanford
• 2022: 27:38.54, Adriaan Wildschutt, Florida State
• 2021: 27:41.16, Conner Mantz, BYU
• 2019: 28:11.30, Connor McMillan, BYU
• 2018: 28:04.44, Tyler Day, Northern Arizona

A true freshman had just made a decade of elite collegiate distance times – all recorded under the most optimal conditions – look like brisk jogs.

It’s the final day of competition at the NCAA West Region Preliminaries in Fayetteville, Ark., well into a late-night 10,000m race in which only the Top 12 finishers advance to the NCAA Final in Eugene. Samuel is hanging the front of the pack with 12 laps to go after a tightly-paced strategic race in which mere fractions of a second decide who moves on after he and teammate Vincent Chirchir had both made a push to lead the race together.

But over the next three laps, the 17-year-old Chirchir had dropped to eighth as the pace started to take its toll on the young runner who had only joined the Lobos at the semester. After another 400 meters, he fell out of qualifying position in 15th, and stayed there over the next four laps. Habtom noticed after looking over his shoulder for him – typically considered taboo by distance coaches – before intentionally dropping back to run with him, putting himself out of the top 12 briefly in doing so.

Simply by running with him and pushing him to stay in the race, Habtom managed to get “Vinny” back up to qualifying position as he surged back into the race, leaving him to his own devices as the race turned to its final stretch with two laps left. Chirchir couldn’t fully hold on the rest of the way, but he wouldn’t have come nearly as close without Samuel helping him.

Closing with a 58-second final lap, Habtom took over late and won the race even after exerting himself more than he anticipated.

Just like in Madison, the combination of Samuel’s gifts and his sheer willpower permitted him to do a rare thing – taking an individual risk solely because his conviction as a teammate wouldn’t allow him to do otherwise. He had thrown his race strategy out the window for the sake of elevating a teammate to a life-changing accomplishment and still won the damn thing anyways.

In a similar vein, the duality of the rivalry and friendship between Graham Blanks and Habtom Samuel felt somewhat poetic – two forces that rise above the rest as the race transitions from a show of aerobic talent into a measure of sheer willpower. 

In 2023, Samuel was the only one who could hang with Blanks until the very end on that hilly Virginia course. In 2024, Blanks was the only one who could resist Samuel’s sheer will to win.

Two runners dominating the rest of the field in the same way twice in a row is uncommon  – the same two runners hadn’t gone 1-2 in consecutive years since 1959-1960, and it’s only happened three times in the history of NCAA cross country. 

And on that damp day in Verona, Graham won the all-important race. But Habtom won everyone’s respect.

Immediately after winning with a new course record… turns around to cheer on and congratulate the guys finishing next on a race well run.

Habtom is simply the coolest. pic.twitter.com/EeIwko4Hzy

— New Mexico XC/T&F (@UNMLoboXCTF) October 20, 2024

Blanks – an American from Georgia who was able to leverage running to attend an Ivy League school in Boston – and Samuel – an Eritrean who fled to the U.S. to pursue an education and change his life – are two sides of the same coin. 

Reject the superficial comparisons about the quality of life in the United States compared to Eritrea. It wasn’t pure talent or privilege, but grit and unrelentingness that got them to where they both are now; an ability to channel those motivations into a champion’s utmost desperation to win. 

After the race, Blanks, compelled by the way things shook out, had a proposal for Habtom: a jersey swap. A soccer player at heart, Habtom enthusiastically agreed, donning Harvard’s black top while Blanks put on the turquoise New Mexico singlet in what was – by all understanding – the first post-race jersey swap at an NCAA D-I Cross Country Championships. 

But even that feels fitting, given the exceptional circumstances of their rivalry. Two opposite sides of the world, two disparate athletic makeups – but the same heart of a champion. For all the varied discussion of pre-race contenders, it was always going to be between those two. 

When UNM Head Coach Darren Gauson shared the photo of the two to Instagram, he captioned it “Ronaldo and Messi,” playing upon he and Samuel’s shared love of soccer. 

Two once-in-a-generation stars that merely happened to exist in the same era. Two sides of the same coin that needed each other’s looming presence to push them to reach those heights in the first place.

“Two of the greats,” Gauson laughed.

Two G.O.A.T.’s, as the younger generation would be inclined.

The other thing that’s gotten Habtom to this junction in his career is that he has always understood that running will be his livelihood.

Habtom’s persona is a dichotomy of groundedness and supreme confidence – the kind one doesn’t have to speak into existence. When he speaks with conviction about his chances ahead of a race, it’s not speculative or hopeful: everything he believes about what he is capable of achieving is based on something tangible that he has proven to himself already.

He speaks with a soft voice but indicates his conviction when he means what he says — there is no mistaking otherwise.

After earning 2024 MW Indoor Performer of the Meet honors after sweeping the 3,000m and 5,000m races in not-particularly-close fashion at the Albuquerque Convention Center, Samuel was nowhere to be found to accept his award, even as the announcer repeated his name. He was busy running a cool-down outside, oblivious to the fact he was even up for an award beyond his individual event wins.

“Good,” he said with a smile when told he won the award after returning, not surprised but not affected by the revelation either; “Good.”

When asked about the upcoming outdoor season, he was similarly plain, but not out of disinterest in what’s next – It was just that simple.

“I’m really good outdoors – better than indoors – so I’m very excited for the outdoor season,” he said with a laugh. “Some of the guys (were) faster than me this season. 

“But I’ll beat them, definitely all of them in the outdoor season.”

Few track athletes make promises like that, especially distance athletes who can fall victim to a strategic race that doesn’t match their strengths or suffer from late-season fatigue that limits their chances to go toe-to-toe with competitors who benefited from an indoor season or cross country season off. Samuel bore a heavy load for the Lobos from the get-go, and he hadn’t even ran at indoor nationals yet – there was nothing that guaranteed he could keep this going all year long in his first year of collegiate training, nonetheless against the nation’s best at outdoor nationals.

But with Habtom, those are just niceties; idle thoughts that merit as much attention as is granted them. He truly hates to lose.

As he remembers telling assistant coach Brian Maty ahead of that fateful 2024 outdoor championship race, that same conviction wells in his voice.

“This time, no one can take it from me – this is mine. I’m going to be a champion.” 

“10K? I’m gonna die tomorrow – but no one can beat me.”

Even after his dramatic fall, Habtom did precisely that. He beat them all.

It’s now June of 2025, with Habtom preparing to return once again to Eugene to contest the 5,000m and 10,000m and conclude a sophomore year that has seen him rise to new heights – along with a similarly uber-talented freshman in Kenyan national Ishmael Kipkurui. But this time around, the taste of defeat is more recent, more acidic.

Habtom finished second in the 5,000m by mere fractions of a second to Oklahoma State Bryan Musau as the sophomore outkicked him down the final stretch after hanging on his tail the whole way. He missed out on first team All-American status for the first time in the 3,000m two days later, the physical burdens of the 3K/5K double wearing on as the race heated up and he crossed ninth. He finished second to Kipkurui at the 2025 iteration of THE TEN, even as both finished below the previous collegiate record. 

But this time around, he’s learned to compartmentalize his races – he knows the degrees of separation between the best of the best in this final race will be miniscule, and it demands all of his focus and prioritization.

Maybe the stars will align again, and it will once more be the perfect time to be a champion. Maybe the saga of Habtom Samuel deserves more winds and turns to humanize his defeats and accentuate his eventual triumph, as they did exactly 12 months ago. 

We’ll find out soon enough, knowing that whatever the outcome, every ounce of every struggle that has forged Habtom Samuel Keleta’s soul will have been poured into it.

Will Samuel be remembered as the man who almost won with one shoe, or will some future feat eclipse the present and it will become just an early chapter in a story that’s far more narratively dense? 

There are plenty of Olympic gold medalists whose names escape our collective recall as the years fade, but most know the story of Jim Thorpe winning a gold medal with shoes found in a trash can. There’s something in the novelty of battling through adversity that no one else has to reckon with and still achieving the result through will alone.

Social media flooded with comments on Habtom’s performance that day in November, from new fans marveling at the singular feat to those who couldn’t believe he’d nearly done it again.

Habtom Samuel: Kind of a big deal.#GoLobos pic.twitter.com/GjPkNcPiJx

— New Mexico XC/T&F (@UNMLoboXCTF) November 25, 2024

But one comment felt especially poignant for the man who has spent his life gritting his way through far worse than a missing shoe and became a hero for finishing second.

Habtom Samuel will conclude his 2025 outdoor season this week at NCAA Outdoor Championships at Hayward Field, competing in the Men’s 10K Final on Wednesday and the Men’s 5K Final on Friday. All of this week’s competition will be available to stream via ESPN+ and broadcast via ESPNU. Head to GoLobos.com/FollowTrack for all of this week’s live results and streaming links and follow @UNMLoboXCTF on Instagram and X for live coverage, meet day content and more.