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Abdi NageeyeDutch track and field athlete
Date of Birth: 02.03.1989
Country:  Netherlands |
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Abdi Nageeye
Early Life and FamilyAbdi Nageeye, a Dutch runner of Somali origin, was born on March 2, 1989, in Mogadishu, Somalia. Amidst the outbreak of the civil war, he fled with his two brothers to the Netherlands in 1996. For the next four years, he resided with his older half-brother in Den Helder and attended school.
At age ten, his half-brother took him to Syria, where they lived for three years before returning to their parents' farm in Somalia. However, Nageeye yearned to return to the Netherlands and eventually managed to do so after traveling to neighboring Ethiopia. There, he found a Dutch foster family in Oldebroek and soon after became a Dutch citizen.
Athletics Career
Nageeye's athletic career initially focused on football before transitioning to running in 2007. He joined a local club and began training. His linguistic abilities, including Somali, Dutch, Arabic, English, and Amharic, proved invaluable throughout his journey.
Olympic Games
In 2016, Nageeye made his Olympic debut at the Rio de Janeiro Summer Games after exceeding the qualifying time in Amsterdam in 2015. Competing in the marathon, he finished 11th with a time of 2:13:01.
At the 2018 European Athletics Championships in Berlin, he participated in the men's marathon but failed to complete the race.
Nageeye currently (as of August 2021) represents the NN Running Team, an international elite long-distance running team managed by Global Sports Communication in Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Tokyo Olympics 2020
In 2021, Nageeye participated in his second Summer Olympics, held in Tokyo. Due to climate conditions, the marathon was moved from Tokyo to Sapporo. In a thrilling finish against his Belgian friend Bashir Abdi and Kenyan runner Lawrence Cherono, he won the silver medal with a time of 2:09:58, only behind the reigning Olympic champion and world record holder, Eliud Kipchoge.
