How Weini Kelati Went From Asylum Seeker to Olympian

Indeed, it is at this same track a decade ago that Kelati made a life-changing decision to seek asylum in the U.S. after taking part in the World Junior Championships for the Eritrean national youth team. The story of how she intentionally chose to miss her return flight and seek asylum has become a folklore that has followed Kelati’s rise to become one of the U.S.'s most promising runners at the Paris Olympics.

“I get pretty emotional every time I come here because I have the memory of when I left my family,” she said of Hayward Field. “I was just 17 at the time, but growing up in Africa, you learn to figure it out from a young age. I felt like I could make that decision by myself and handle anything that life throws at me,” she said in an interview with Runner’s World.

Now, at 27, Kelati has built her name as a long distance runner while becoming a state champion at her high school in Virginia, an NCAA champion, a 13-time All-America honoree at the University of New Mexico, and now, a professional athlete sponsored by Under Armour.

Her first major professional success came in January 2024, when she set the American record in the half marathon with a time of 1:06:25, her debut at that distance.

But behind the success is also a story of grit and perseverance, and the loneliness that comes with emigrating to a new country. Kelati’s decision to remain in the U.S. had been planned even before she left Eritrea, but it came with the hard realization that she would be leaving her family behind.

“Leaving my mom and my family was the darkest day of my life. That’s what brought me and my mom to tears,” she said. “We didn’t know when we were going to see each other again. It was hard. I had to learn a new culture, language and adapt to a new life in the U.S. without my family.”

It would be another eight years before Kelati would be able to see her mother again. She had to wait to receive her own U.S. citizenship, and organize for her mother to apply for a passport, before they had their long-awaited reunion in Uganda. “For 20 days, we hung out and chatted about the things we missed because we hadn’t talked in forever. For eight years, we had no time to talk about the little and big things. We talked until 5 a.m. some nights,” she said.

And now she hopes to make her family, and all the people who have supported her through it all, proud at her first Olympics. She will race against the likes of Dutch Olympic champion Sifan Hassan and Ethiopia’s Gudaf Tsegay, the 5,000m record holder.

And she expects that people from her native Eritrea will also be watching. She hears from people in Eritrea every time she races. “They’re watching,” she said in the interview with media outlets after her 10,000m win last month. Every time I race, wherever I go, they watch my races. They are going to see me in Paris too.”