Starting this week, every weekend, we pick two of the best stories published in Goodmorning Runlovers, the newsletter edited by Andrea Corradin that you can read in less than a minute.
It arrives in your inbox every day Monday through Friday, by 8:30 a.m.
If you are not a member just click on this link or the banner above.
These are two stories, distant geographically and humanly.
Yet they have something in common that made us think they would be great together.
They are those of one person you have probably never heard of, and that of another you most likely know.
Both are searching for something, both are on a journey.
No matter where you come from
It doesn’t matter where you come from.
Who you were in your previous life.
What problems you had.
It only matters what you chose to do today to overcome them.
The tip of Cape Angela in northern Tunisia is the northernmost point on the African continent.
On April 7, 2023, among European tourists intent on enjoying a nice strawberry daiquiri, a young man is seen running along the waterfront.He has a long red beard.
He appears tired but smiling.
He passes a red ribbon simulating a finish line.
Then celebrating friends embrace him.
He is Russell Cook, a 27-year-old British ultra runner with a past marked by drinking and gambling problems.
To face his demons one day, after hitting rock bottom for the umpteenth time, he decided to change everything.
By putting himself to the test in extreme sporting feats.
Like the one he concluded in April on the Tunisian coast.
He ran across the whole of Africa.
From South Africa to Tunisia.
16,294 km. 19.1 million steps.
16 states.
In between: mountains and deserts, a robbery suffered in Angola, a hospitalization in Nigeria, diplomatic problems in Mauritania.
In addition to inspiring thousands, he has raised £790,000 for two charities, Running Charity, which aims to help homeless youth, and Sandblast, which runs educational programs in refugee camps in Algeria.
To some a fool.
To others an example of tenacity and selflessness.
Take your pick.
It took several years spent hitting rock bottom to start thinking: the only way out is to take absolute responsibility for the situation I am in.
I have to try to improve myself and bring positive energy out there into the world by committing myself, working on myself and then, slowly but surely, traveling uphill.
Behind every person is a story
The month of December is usually one marked by preparations for Christmas.
Not for Dennis, or at least not that year, 1966.
His father Philander, a former member of the U.S. Air Force, decided to abandon his family and move to the Philippines to build a new life.
That event certainly characterizes the boy’s childhood, which he spends in one of Dallas’ poorest neighborhoods with his mother and two sisters.
He is a shy and introverted boy.
Unlike his sisters, he does not excel in sports.
He struggles to feel accepted.
After finishing school, he starts working at the airport.
But he is arrested for stealing some watches: he wanted to impress his classmates.
He gets fired and his mother kicks him out of the house.
He becomes homeless.
He sleeps with friends or in city parks.
He spends complex years that will mark him.
But then he grows 23 centimeters in a year.
His stature no longer causes him to go unnoticed. Dennis Rodman is noticed in his little games at the basketball court.
He is offered a scholarship to a remote college in Oklahoma.
That is the turning point that will lead him to the NBA, selected by the Detroit Pistons. In Detroit he finds a father, coach Chuck Daly.
With him bel 1989 he wins his first championship.
He also wins the following year.
It sounds like the classic story of the boy who redeems himself. Here he is tenderly moved at the presentation of an award.
He divorces.
He abandons his infant daughter.
He leaves the Pistons.
On February 11, 1993, he is found asleep in a parking lot with a gun pointed at his head.
Demons and ghosts, grief and anger.
But that night the boy from Dallas begins a second life.
Maybe not the one you’d imagine.
He reinvents his image: a rebel look, tattoos, piercings colored hair.
He becomes a rock star. Controversial.
Eclectic.
Transgressive.
Brilliant at times.
Has an affair with Madonna.
Quickie marriages.
Nights in Las Vegas casinos.
On the court strong, but off the parquet pure madness.
Photo: ATHLETA MAG
On the way down, during yet another self-destructive phase, he ends up at the Chicago Bulls of Michael Jordan and coach Phil Jackson, whose loyal soldier he becomes.
On the court he becomes invincible again: he wins 3 NBA titles in a row.
After the end of his sports career, he will remain a media personality, always ready to talk about himself.
Far away the memory of that reserved young athlete.
A man still struggling with his demons today.
In 2012, invited on stage to celebrate his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, he moved the audience.
Unable to hold his emotion, he showed himself in all his difficulties, laying bare and rewinding the tape of his life.
If someone asks me if I have any regrets in my basketball career, I say I have only one regret: I wish I had been a better father.
But behind each person is a story, often hidden.