Gharib Confident In Chicago

This two-time World Champion from Morocco is ready to take on the Chicago Marathon and has one goal: to win!

October 7, 2007

When Jaouad Gharib said in the elite athlete press conference that he expected to win Sunday's LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon he wasn't attempting to be arrogant or boastful, he simply was reflecting his confidence that the predicted >hot, humid conditions would be favorable to him.

A two-time World Champion at the marathon, Gharib has demonstrated his abilities in championship style racing--tactical battles that are often decided in the final meters, not the final miles of the race. He has also run well in the heat, which is another feature of many championship races held in places that have hot temperatures in the summer when they are held.

Coming from humble beginnings--Gharib's father was a bus driver--a Berber who was raised in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. There are nearly 19 million Berbers in Morocco and are a fiercely independent people. Many Berbers call themselves some variant of the word Imazighen, meaning "free men". Gharib follows that lead, training apart from the rest of the Moroccans, essentially self-coached, and following his own path. For example, he dropped out of school before college because he "didn't like it," he said. He did not pass one level, largely because he wasn't interested, so he quit.

Jobless, he watched the Marrakech Marathon and saw that runners won prize money. A soccer player, he was athletic, but not good enough at soccer to be a professional, so he started training for running at age 22. He was sixth in his first marathon in Rotterdam, then became world champion in his second attempt at the distance in Paris in 2003. That race remains the highlight of his career, he said, because it was a surprise. He didn't expect to win. He had gotten early advice on running from a fellow Berber, 1988 Olympic 10K champion Brahim Boutaib. It was Boutaib who recommended Gharib run the marathon.

It turned out to be a wise career move. It has allowed him to buy a home for his parents and contribute to the community, he said. It also, in a way, has helped him get through his training during Ramadan. A muslim, Gharib is required to fast for a month, until Ramadan ends on October 13, not eating from sun up to sun down. But there are exceptions, Gharib said. If it is required for your job, you can in essence pay to eat during the day. You have to contribute to your mosque to fund food for 60 people in order to get the dispensation, Gharib said. So, he fasted for the first 12 days of Ramadan, but has been eating since then.

Gharib also had another challenge to overcome to be able to run in Chicago, an Achilles injury that bothered him in April's Flora London Marathon. The injury kept him out of the World Championships in Osaka because it didn't heal enough for him to be prepared for that event. That caused him a lot of problems with the Moroccan federation because Gharib was expected to be the team leader for the event. When it was learned that he was running in Chicago, the federation demanded to see his medical records to prove that he hadn't not run Osaka to run Chicago instead.

Though he likes to be private--he trains in Michlifin, 18 kilometers from the official Moroccan training center in Ifran--he, helped by his managers, conducted a media campaign that verified his injury and countered the argument that he was just running for money, not his country. His major career goal, in fact, is to improve his personal best of 2:07:12 and win an Olympic gold medal. As it's expected to be hot and humid in Beijing in 2008, Sunday's race should be good preparation.