Abdi Nageeye

Abdi Nageeye was born on 2 March 1989 in Dharwanaaje, Somalia.^[2] At the age of six, he was resettled as a refugee in the Netherlands.^[3] After spending four years in the country, he then lived with his family in Syria and Somalia. Afterwards, Nageeye returned to the Netherlands via Ethiopia and was adopted by a family in Oldebroek.^[3]

He is fluent in Somali, Amharic, Arabic, Dutch, and English.^[3]

Nageeye finished eighth at the 2016 Boston Marathon.^[4][5] Later that year, he finished 11th in the Olympic marathon in Rio.

He set his first Dutch marathon record in October 2017 at the Amsterdam Marathon, clocking 2:08:16 to beat Kamiel Maase's 2:08.21 set also in Amsterdam in 2007.

In 2018, Nageeye competed in the men's marathon at the 2018 European Athletics Championships held in Berlin, Germany, where he did not finish the race.^[6]

At the 2019 Rotterdam Marathon, he lowered his national marathon record by nearly two minutes with a time of 2:06:17 for fourth place.^[1]

Nageeye has also trained in Kenya and is currently part of the NN Running Team, an international team of elite long-distance runners managed by Global Sports Communication in Nijmegen, Netherlands.^[7]

He won the silver medal in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic marathon, finishing in a season's best time of 2:09:58.^[1]

In April 2022, Nageeye won his first race over the classic distance, becoming the first Dutchman ever to win the Rotterdam Marathon. He ran a time of 2:04:56, slicing more than a minute off his own Dutch record which he set in the same city in 2019.^[8]