Siksika runner channels Billy Mills's Olympic upset in pursuit of Tokyo 2020

Rilee ManyBears is a celebrated runner, but his first competitive race wasn't his idea.

He was in Grade 5 at Bassano School. He was wearing jeans and skater shoes, but his teacher told him he had to run the race.

"It was mandatory for all of us students to take part," ManyBears, who is now 23 years old, said in a Thursday interview on The Homestretch.

It was an 800-metre sprint, and it was a revelation, of sorts.

"It was amazing," ManyBears said.

What it revealed to him was that competitive running wasn't unpleasant at all — particularly when you were fast.

Rilee ManyBears was fast.

"It's pretty much like one of my favourite running memories," he said.

It would be great if that 800-metre run was the turning point for ManyBears, but life kept happening. 

Life growing up in the Siksika First Nation was a struggle for ManyBears. In 2013, in his senior year of high school, his father died. ManyBears fell into alcohol and drug addiction. He grew increasingly depressed.

Through it all, however, ManyBears remained an athlete to watch.

While money was always a problem, he managed to find funding to make it to the North American Indigenous Games in Regina, where he survived on $70 for over a week in 2014 while winning gold in the 3,000 metres and taking home bronze medals in the 1,500-metre and six-kilometre runs.

That led to ManyBears competing in the World Indigenous Games in Brazil, in 2015, where he won gold in an 8.4-km event that combined road racing and cross-country.

His journey to becoming an Olympian got derailed the same year, when he was forced to undergo a surgical procedure on his heart — he has a condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome.

A month later, he completed the Boston Marathon.

Billy Mills in 1964 Olympics

Through it all, ManyBears has continued to train and chase his running dreams. He gave up alcohol and drugs. He is a youth worker and frequent motivational speaker. (At an event for Calgary's 2026 Winter Olympic bid last October, ManyBears said if Calgary won, he would learn a winter sport so that he could compete at home.)

Partly, he's following the example of Billy Mills, who came from a background not unlike ManyBears's, to win the gold medal in the 10,000-metre run at the 1964 Olympics in Rome — still the only American to ever win it.

Mills grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, was orphaned at 12, served in the U.S. Marines, and, prior to Rome, was sick before coming from behind to win gold in one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history. (And then was portrayed by Robby Benson in the Hollywood version of his life story, Running Brave, in the mid-1980s).

Years ago, when he was struggling, people would talk to ManyBears about Mills's journey, as a way of motivating him.

"I heard of him," ManyBears said. "I believe I was 16 years old and I just heard about him."

Then, in 2014, ManyBears met the Olympian. 

"I could really relate to him because of the barriers he faced [as a youth]. You know, he's an orphan, too, and he attempted suicide," ManyBears said.

ManyBears even visited Mills at his home, where Mills let him try on his Olympic singlet and shorts and his gold medal.

"He's a really, really inspirational guy," ManyBears said.

"Like him going to the '64 Olympic Games as a virtually unknown," he said. "They didn't know who he was, and going up against Ron Clark — world record holder — and that a year before [that race], he was diagnosed as hypoglycemic, and then just him not giving up."

These days, ManyBears speaks frequently to groups of Indigenous youth attending school, some of whom face the same sorts of challenges he did when he was their age.

He recently appeared with a group of Indigenous speakers at an event at the Calgary Library, speaking about the role sports plays in helping Indigenous communities heal.

"That's how the Truth and Reconciliation Act comes in: one of the calls for action is sport and reconciliation," he said.

Sponsorship sought

Now, ManyBears hopes to find a sponsor that could fund his training as he tries to make it to Tokyo in 2020.

"There's a lot of barriers that First Nations athletes face," he said. "For elite Aboriginal athletes — there's no funding for that."

Meanwhile, coming up are the North American Indigenous Games, to be held in Halifax, which means fundraising to pay for flights and accommodations.

ManyBears works full-time at Siksika as a youth worker, and earns extra money doing speaking events that he was able to turn into training in Kenya, and perhaps next year, to a return trip to the medal stand at the North American Indigenous Games.

ManyBears doesn't know if he will make Tokyo in 2020, but if he doesn't, he plans to try again for Paris in 2024. He's met Olympians, who give him advice about having a backup plan in case the Olympic dream doesn't happen.

For ManyBears, Plan B looks a lot like the Plan A: keep moving.

"Keep training," he said, "and keep working, still being me."

With files from The Homestretch.