The American sprinter was raised by his aunt, Virginia, whose nickname is tattooed on him. “Who knows what would become of me without her,” he admits.
Without her I probably wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be an elite athlete and who knows what would become of me. Virginia, the woman who raised me, the woman who made me who I am. I was two years old when I moved in with her, so I was a baby, I didn’t know what was going on around me. My dad went to jail and my mom took a wrong path in life so Aunt Virginia was the only one who could take care of my four siblings. Meme, as we call her, raised her children, her brother’s children and her sister’s children, that is, us. In total, 13 children living under the same roof.”
Write Fred Kerley, the new 100-meter world champion, about his childhood in Taylor, a Texas town near Austin, about his rough personality, about his life. Watching him celebrate his title yesterday at the World Cup in Eugene, it is impossible not to empathize: blows to the chest, gestures of self-affirmation copied from the wrestler Conor McGregor, a vindication of himself. After everything he’s been through, it makes sense. His story is supposed in the statistics books: he is the first 400 meter runner, bronze in that distance in the last World Cup in Doha, who becomes a pure sprinter and triumphs. But really, that’s the least of it. Because what defines Kerley, what makes him who he is, is not the specialty in which he was trained on the slopes, but how he lived those first years of his life. As he himself admits in that writing in ‘Spikes’, he could be dead or in jail today.
Football and tattoos
“In my teens I saw a lot of people stray from the right path, even family members, even very close friends. A lot of gifted teens who didn’t thrive. I still see them on Instagram today and remember how talented they were. They were great, but suddenly when they finished school high school, they took the same path as their older brothers. I thought differently. Since I was very little I convinced myself that I couldn’t do that, that I couldn’t end up like them. I wanted to have studies, travel the world, get ahead. track and field allowed me to do that and my aunt helped me through the process,” Kerley said of her background.
When he was a child he got used to training, to training a lot, whatever sport it was. At his high school, Taylor High School, he was a standout in football and basketball, but a broken collarbone his senior year diverted his college career into track and sprinting in particular. . Even today, his favorite sport is football, to which several of his many cousins are dedicated: one of them, Jeremy Kerley, played eight seasons in the NFL, most of it with the New York Jets. With him he goes to the local parish where he spent all his childhood on Wednesday and Sunday afternoons. With him he became a fervent believer.
A psalm and Bolt’s record
“Praise, my soul, the Lord! Lord my God, you are great; you have clothed yourself with glory and majesty”, can be read under his ribs on the right side of his torso, Psalm 104, his first tattoo. As he admitted a few years ago, he did it when he was only 12 years old in a street stall without any type of health insurance. Then came the rest, up to 11. Towards one of them, ‘Blessed’, ‘blessed’, directed the eyes of the public yesterday after winning the final of the 100 meters. He made it far short of the mark he had promised, but it didn’t matter either.
He had claimed that he could threaten the world record for Usain Bolt (9.58 seconds) and stayed one world away (9.86); next time I’ll try again. At 27 years old and with the 2024 Paris Olympics as his goal, he can still be among the best in history in the hectometer and do it as always, dedicating it to his aunt Virginia, whose nickname is also tattooed on him. “The tattoo that means the most to me is on the inside of my left arm: Meme. Without her, I don’t know what my life would be like. I don’t know where I’d be, if I’d be with my parents or if I’d be in trouble. It’s because that, wherever it is in the world, I always call my aunt Virginia, every day. She changed my life, she made my life. She will always be my strength.”
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