They’re corn farmers from isolated Native villages in Mexico barely surviving drought but they’re trouncing highly trained athletes in the world’s most difficult marathon races.
The Montreal Gazette reports that Tarahumara Natives from Mexico’s rugged Seirra Madrés mountains took seven of the top I I places in a 100-mile marathon in Colorado last summer.
In traditional races between villages, Tarahumaras run without stopping for up to two days. An American couple spotted them and entered them for the first time in a race in 1992.
But all of them dropped out in midrace at the 30-mile point, where they were found sitting at the edge of the trail gazing at the Colorado mountains.
Last summer in the same race, only one non-Native, Ann Trason of California, managed to keep up with the fastest Tarahumaras.
“I passed her but then she cast a spell on my knee,” said Martimiano Cervantes, 42, who came in just behind Trason.
First-place winner Juan Herrera, who smokes and runs only once every few weeks at most, was nonchalant about his victory. “I knew I was going to win.” But the Tarahumaras are given only corn meal for winning the U.S. races, and some are growing suspicious about whether their sponsors are making money off their backs.
