Paris (from our correspondent) – He has only fragmentary memories of his early childhood. His mother gave him up, he alternated one foster care after another. “And as a child, you don’t really understand what’s going on,” he recalled to People magazine.
His life’s journey finally took a happier turn at age four, when Kenny and his twin brother, Ian, were picked up from foster care by Mary Ann Bednarek of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who adopted a total of four children.
“I remember how she then took me to kindergarten and I kept wondering if she was going to pick me up or disappear, like it happened to us before. And when she picked us up in the afternoon, my brother and I thought it was good,” he recalls.
It wasn’t always an idyllic adolescence. Kenny struggled with both ADHD and emotional instability. He himself says that he came to his senses before leaving for university. “We’re dealing with a lot of problems, and when you finally start behaving nicely, you’re going to leave?” his adoptive mother teased. “I had to grow up sometimes, didn’t I?” Bednarek, who celebrates adoption day instead of his birthday, responded with a laugh.
Together with his brother, he soon found a great passion for running. “We always raced from the house to the library. In winter, calmly across a frozen pond,” he says.
At university, he combined athletics with American football, but after that he signed a professional contract with Nike, which directed him to Florida to join Dennis Mitchell’s training group.
The former sprinter from the Carl Lewis era led, for example, the Olympic winner in the 100, Justin Gatlin, or the biggest star of the current American women’s sprint, Sha’Carri Richardson.
Bednarek, who was originally more of a quarter runner, became a sprinter on shorter tracks. And finally he could begin to at least partially return to his adoptive mother what she had given him. “She could even buy a house now, she has a bigger one than me,” she smiles. “But she made me a better person, I wouldn’t be here without her love and support,” he confessed with a serious face.
She also tries to be with him at all races. “It’s just more complicated as I run all over the world,” Bednarek admits.
Of course, she couldn’t even be with him at the “covid” Olympics in Tokyo, where he won silver, but he had already arranged flights and tickets for her to the World Championships in Budapest last year. “I’m happy that she could see me on the top stage as well,” he appreciated when he won silver again in the 200m.
Photo: Ashley Landis, CTK/AP
Kenneth Bednarek will be one of the biggest favorites in the 200.
In Paris, 25-year-old Kenny “Kung-Fu” Bednarek, as his nickname sounds, once again wears a headband in the style of the action hero Rambo, after whom he named his dog, and the support of his biggest fan in the audience. He finished seventh in the 100, and will probably be the biggest challenger to his compatriot Noah Lyles on the double track.
It will be clear Thursday night, and in the town of Rice Lake, Wisconsin, where Mary Ann Bednarek’s family has moved, there will be dozens of people around the grill watching the finale as well as a hundred.
