Samwel Mailu

Samwel Nyamai Mailu (born 7 February 1993) is a Kenyan long-distance runner. He won a bronze medal in the half marathon at the 2023 World Athletics Road Running Championships in Riga.

Early life
Mailu grew up the son of vegetable farmers, one of five children, in a village called Ulawani, not far from the Kenya-Tanzania border and Mount Kilimanjaro, although he himself did not live at high altitude. He only started to train at fifteen years-old and stopped running until later in life after completing a college course to become a primary school teacher. He started training seriously in 2020, and moved to a training camp in Machakos, southeast of Nairobi.

Career
In June 2022, Mailu won the Hamburg half-marathon with a time of 1:01:52 despite bad weather conditions. Later that year Mailu finished as runner-up at the Frankfurt Marathon running 2:07.19 despite initially only starting the race in the role of pacemaker. He had never completed a competitive marathon before.

Mailu set a new course record and personal best time of 2:05.08 to win the Vienna Marathon in April 2023. In June 2023, Mailu successfully defended his Hamburg half-marathon title.

Mailu was part of a Kenyan clean-sweep of the medals, alongside Sabastian Sawe and Daniel Simiu Ebenyo in the half-marathon during the World Road Running Championships in Riga, Latvia on 1 October 2023. It meant Kenya also comfortably claimed the team title at the event.