Runner quantity 401 was useless drained and affected by low blood stress. She was additionally final by a large margin within the 5,000 meters and plodding alone, by a raucous rainstorm, across the monitor of a near-empty stadium.
Bou Samnang, 20, completed the race anyway.
Her rain-soaked efficiency on the Southeast Asian Games — this 12 months’s version was hosted this month by her residence nation, Cambodia — would have been a footnote in a event that’s unknown to most sporting followers outdoors the area. But when video of it circulated broadly on social media, she turned an unlikely nationwide superstar.
“I knew that I might not win, but I instructed myself that I shouldn’t cease,” she stated in an interview.
As she struggled on, it helped {that a} small group of supporters had been applauding furiously, she added, and that she felt an obligation to complete as a result of she was representing her nation.
Ms. Bou Samnang, who graduated from highschool final 12 months, didn’t anticipate to draw worldwide consideration when she arrived on May 8 for the 5,000-meter remaining in Phnom Penh, the capital and her hometown. She was grateful simply to be competing.
A couple of weeks earlier, Ms. Bou Samnang had suffered from a very unhealthy bout of low blood stress, a results of her persistent anemia, whereas she was coaching within the southwestern Chinese metropolis of Kunming. A health care provider instructed her to cease operating for some time, and her coach, Kieng Samorn, didn’t insist in any other case.
“She has a well being downside,” Mr. Kieng Samorn stated. “We cannot pressure her.”
But Ms. Bou Samnang stated she was desirous to run on the Southeast Asian Games, her first worldwide competitors, and her coach didn’t stand in her means.
In the 5,000-meter girls’s remaining, held in a evenly attended 60,000-seat stadium, Ms. Bou Samnang gathered on the beginning line alongside a number of the area’s finest runners. The eventual winner, Nguyen Thi Oanh of Vietnam, is an Olympian who had gained a number of golds at earlier Southeast Asian Games.
After the beginning gun sounded and the runners fell into formation, Ms. Bou Samnang took a place in the direction of the again of the pack. Within a minute or so, she had fallen to this point behind that she was not seen in a lot of the tv protection.
But she saved going, at the same time as Ms. Oanh and different runners completed, the skies opened up, and a few followers misplaced curiosity.
Ms. Bou Samnang would end in 22 minutes and 54 seconds — practically six minutes behind Ms. Oanh of Vietnam and about 90 seconds behind a compatriot, Run Romdul. By then the stadium floodlights had been out, water was pooling on the monitor, and her pink sneakers and crimson uniform had been utterly soaked by.
Her efficiency recalled different runners who persevered, together with a number of who famously gained monitor occasions after falling. One is Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands, who did so within the 1,500-meter occasion on the Tokyo Olympics two years in the past.
Runners do not are inclined to win a lot reward in the event that they lose by a large margin. One exception is in long-distance occasions, the place it is not uncommon to rejoice the final finisher, stated Steve Brammar, the secretary basic of the Trail Runners Association of Hong Kong. An ultramarathon path race that he directs there has an “Ultimate Finisher” trophy for simply that objective.
Ms. Bou Samnang’s “perseverance was inspiring and actually appears to have warmed hearts and captured imaginations,” Mr. Brammar stated in an electronic mail.
After ending final within the 5,000-meter race this month, Ms. Bou Samnang’s well being prevented her operating the 1,500-meter occasion, as deliberate, her coach stated. But after video of her decided efficiency circulated on-line, she obtained public reward from Cambodia’s king and a $10,000 bonus from Prime Minister Hun Sen and his spouse, equal to a number of years of a median Cambodian’s earnings.
Ms. Bou Samnang, whose father died in 2018, is the third of 4 kids. She stated she would use the bonus to check regulation at a Cambodian college, and that she deliberate to maintain operating competitively.
Her mom, Mai Met, stated that she cried after listening to that her daughter had completed final within the 5,000-meter race. But that unhappiness was tempered by the outpouring of public assist that got here later.
“I’m delighted,” stated Ms. Mai Met, 44, who has lengthy supported the household by working in garment factories.
Her decided end illustrated an “very best of sport,” stated Edgar Okay. Tham, a sports activities psychologist in Singapore who works with athletes round Southeast Asia.
He stated the eye Ms. Bou Samnang has obtained is notable partly as a result of Cambodian athletes are inclined to fare higher at fight sports activities than monitor occasions in regional competitions.
But the instance she set, he added, will resonate far past Southeast Asia.
“That’s what life’s about: shifting ahead and utilizing failures as classes to bounce again,” he stated. “If you are taking it on this spirit, it is one thing inspirational.”