He is an enigma.  Emmanuel Wanyonyi’s story does not begin with medals or bright stadium lights. It begins with cattle. And a debt he never imagined at 13 years.

“I was paid two hundred shillings ($1.55) a month to herd cows,” he recalls, his voice steady. “But before the month ended, my mother had already borrowed food from a shop. By the time I was supposed to be paid, I owed Ksh500 ($3.86).”

The irony wasn’t lost on him. A boy working hard in the fields, only to end up poorer than he began.

His journey started in Kitalale, Kitale in western Kenya, where football, rugby and volleyball art h dominant sports.

Four cattle. Three hundred and fifty Kenya shillings ($2.70) a month. He dropped out of school, vanished for weeks, yet no one asked where he had gone to. While looking after the livestock, he scavenged for maize left behind in harvested fields, selling a few cobs to stash away coins.

“By then,” he said, “Nikawa kama raia (I was just an ordinary and worthless person).”

But work was slippery. Sometimes the pay was too little, sometimes nothing at all. In Kitale town, he earned a promise of a thousand shillings ($7.73) per month. At the end of the month… silence.

“I walked away with nothing.”

By 2016, in Bungoma, a thought struck him like thunder: How long can I keep herding cattle? He decided it would be his last year. At Ksh2000 ($15.46) a month, he saved carefully and built a small flat-roofed house back home.

“I thought school had failed me, so I bought a jembe. I weeded our neighbours’ maize farms with my mother. Whatever we earned, we spent on food.”

That was survival.

One thing that at is still engraved in his heart is losing his father in 2018, never getting any closure and never getting enough time to grieve. His late father was a caretaker at a dam and before he met his sudden death, he was just from visiting Wanyonyi’s school to give him money to buy running spikes.

With such dedication, his father was undoubtedly one of his greatest cheerleaders who never lived to see the potential of his talented son. Wanyonyi explained to BBC Sport that his father lost his life under unclear circumstances and to date, they never got the chance to know what happened.

s”It’s like he was strangled and placed by the water. He was found with a mark on his head as if he was hit. What I think happened is that he placed his clothes there to swim and then someone came to rob him,” Emmanuel Wanyonyi said.

“My family never found closure. That day, my world fell apart. It was painful but I didn’t have the luxury of grieving. I had to become the man of the house immediately.”

With his father gone and him becoming the breadwinner, there was only one way out, athletics. He hoped to use his running talent to make a name for himself and also provide for his family and indeed, the plan has worked out well for him.

Then fate arrived in the shape of a friend with running shoes.

“Kibe walked past my home one morning,” Wanyonyi remembered. “I stopped him. I asked him, “Those shoes, what are they for?”

He laughed; he told me they were for running. He had three pairs. I asked him to lend me one. He thought I was joking.”

The next day, they went to the field. Wanyonyi’s legs burned. Pain stabbed him.

“But I told myself, if I rest, it will hurt more. So I ran harder.”

The village thought he had gone mad. He trained in school fields at dusk while pupils played games. Some laughed, some pitied. He ignored them.

In 2017, he fell sick, paused, then came back stronger. He begged teachers at a local primary school to let him run for them.

They said, “Only if you enrol as a pupil.” So a boy who had left school in Class 3 suddenly reappeared in Class 7, squeezed into a borrowed uniform. He guessed his way through exams but never ranked last.

His peers mocked him.

“Read this word on my shirt, Hazard,” one neighbour teased. Wanyonyi could barely read, but neither could the boy mocking him. Years later, that same neighbour cannot answer his texts.

By 2018, Wanyonyi was running at national level. His goal was clear. He met the principal of Kosirai Secondary in Uasin Gishu County, who told him, “No matter what you score in KCPE, you’ll join us. You belong here.”

At Kosirai, reality struck again. Academically, he struggled. He and his friends studied through the night, only to score an E. Emmanuel asked them, “Do you see any hope here?”

They laughed. He chose training instead. Four in the morning, he was on the track.

When teachers demanded his homework, he shrugged: “Stima ilienda (There was power outage).”

They would punish him, but he kept running.

Then came a turning point: an 800-metre race, a meeting with former Olympic champion Janeth Jepkosgei, and an introduction to coach Claudio Berardelli. Claudio eyed him suspiciously.

“Can this boy even run?” he asked his assistant.

“Yes,” Hillary Lelei answered firmly. “He can run.”

That answer changed everything. Wanyonyi joined Claudio’s stable, chasing a dream most thought impossible. By 2021, he stood at the national trials for the World U20 championships. This time, Claudio believed – not fully, but enough.

“Seventy per cent,” the coach said. “Seventy per cent I trust him.”

From a herds boy buried in debt, to a boy in borrowed shoes chasing pain, to a teenager who guessed exams but never came last – Emmanuel Wanyonyi had turned stubbornness into destiny.

And he was only just beginning.

Never despise humble beginnings.

Wanyonyi is now holds several gold medals in various World Athletics Championships. He is chasing a world record and many experts the record is within his reach.

Emmanuel – God with us!

• A Tell Media report / Addition reporting by Agencies