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Runner number 401 was exhausted and suffering from low blood pressure. He also finished by a wide margin in the 5,000 meters and was plodding alone, through a raging storm, around the near-empty stadium track.
Bou Samnang, 20, finished the race.
His rain-soaked performance at the Asian Games – this year’s edition is being hosted this month by his home country, Cambodia – will be a footnote in a tournament unknown to sports fans outside the region. But when the video went viral on social media, he became an unlikely national celebrity.
“I knew I wasn’t going to win, but I said I shouldn’t quit,” he said in an interview.
When he struggled, it helped that a small group of supporters applauded furiously, he added, and he felt he had to finish because he was representing his country.
Ms. Bou Samnang, who graduated from high school last year, did not expect to attract international attention when she arrived on May 8 for the 5,000 meters final in Phnom Penh, the capital and her hometown. He was thankful just to be able to compete.
A few weeks before, Ms. Bou Samnang suffered from low blood pressure, a result of chronic anemia, while he was training in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming. A doctor told him to stop for a while, and his trainer, Kieng Samorn, did not insist.
“He has health problems,” said Mr. Kieng Samorn. “We can’t force him.”
But Ms. Bou Samnang said she is eager to run in the Asian Games, her first international competition, and her coach is not standing in her way.
In the women’s 5,000-meter final, held in a 60,000-seat stadium, Ibu Bou Samnang gathered at the starting line along with some of the region’s best runners. The final winner, Vietnam’s Nguyen Thi Oanh, is an Olympic athlete who has won multiple golds in previous Asian Games.
After the starting gun sounded and the runners fell into formation, Ms. Bou Samnang took a position towards the back of the pack. Within a minute or so, he was so far gone that he was not seen in much of the television coverage.
But he kept going, even though Ms. Oanh and the other runners finished, the sky opened, and some fans lost interest.
Mrs. Bou Samnang will finish in 22 minutes and 54 seconds – nearly six minutes behind Ms. Oanh from Vietnam and about 90 seconds behind his countryman, Run Romdul. At that time, the stadium’s floodlights went out, water collected on the track, and the pink shoes and red uniform were soaked.
Her performance is reminiscent of other runners who have gone on, including some who famously won track events after falling. One of them is Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands, who did it in the 1,500 meters event at the Tokyo Olympics two years ago.
Runners don’t tend to win much praise if they lose by wide margins. One exception in long-distance events, where it is common to celebrate the last finisher, said Steve Brammar, secretary general of the Trail Runners Association of Hong Kong. The ultramarathon track race they lead there has an “Ultimate Finisher” trophy for that purpose.
“Ms. Bou Samnang’s perseverance is truly inspiring and truly seems to warm the heart and capture the imagination,” Mr. Brammar said in an email.
After finishing in the 5,000 meter race this month, Mrs. Bou Samnang’s health prevented her from running in the 1,500 meter event, as she had planned, the coach said. But after a video of his determined performance went viral online, he received public praise from Cambodia’s king and a $10,000 bonus from Prime Minister Hun Sen and his wife, equivalent to several years’ worth of the average Cambodian’s income.
Bou Samnang, whose father died in 2018, is the third of four children. He said he will use the bonus to study law at a Cambodian university, and he plans to run competitively.
Her mother, Mai Met, said she cried after hearing that her daughter had finished in the 5,000-meter race. But that sadness was tempered by the public support that came later.
“I’m very happy,” said Ms. Mai Met, 44, who has been supporting her family for a long time by working in a garment factory.
His determined finish represents “ideal sportsmanship,” said Edgar K. Tham, a sports psychologist in Singapore who works with athletes in Southeast Asia.
He said that the attention Ms. Bou Samnang is particularly important because Cambodian athletes tend to do better in combat sports than track events in regional competitions.
But the example he sets, he added, will resonate far beyond Southeast Asia.
“That’s what life is about: moving forward and using failure as a lesson to bounce back,” he said. “If you take in this spirit, it’s something inspiring.”
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