Interview: Sandu Rebenciuc

By Parker Morse

Meb Keflezighi (Eritrea) and Abdi Abdirahman (Somalia) aren't the only members of this year's U.S. team to the World Cross-Country Championships who were born outside the U.S. Sandu Rebenciuc (pronounced "Ruh-ben-check" -- "That's the closest it's going to get to English") was born in Romania in 1969, then defected in 1988 after representing Romania as a junior in the Balkans Cross Country Championship in Istanbul. After a few years as a refugee in Turkey, he was granted entry to the U.S. in 1990. That fall he was accepted at Division III Augustana College in Illinois, where he won seven NCAA championships -- four at 1,500m (two indoor, two outdoor), one in the steeplechase, one at 10,000m, and one in cross-country -- before graduating in 1994. In 1998 he joined the Army Reserve and applied for their World Class Athlete Program. A steeplechaser on the track, he ran a PR of 8:32.89 in the prelims. and finished ninth in the finals at the 2001 USATF Nationals.

MensRacing.com talked to Sandu after he made his first major U.S. team at the USATF Cross Country Championships in Houston by finishing fifth in the 4,000m ("short course") race.

MensRacing.com: Would you consider today's race a breakthrough result?
Sandu Rebenciuc: Yes, I would say so. I've never made a U.S. team before. I was originally from Romania, so the fact that I am a citizen now, and I've made a U.S. team, that's a dream come true.

MR: When did you come over to the U.S.?
SR: I came to the U.S. in 1990, but I defected from Romania in 1988, two years prior. I spent a couple of years in refugee camps on my way to America.

MR: How long have you been in the Army, with the WCAP?
SR: I got in the Army in '98, but I wasn't in the World Class Athlete program until '99. After the Olympic Trials (in '00) I went back to my Reserve unit in Waterbury, Connecticut. It's a small unit, I was a system administrator. It's a computer job. Then I went back to the WCAP in April of 2001.

MR: You did decently well in the 2000 Olympic Trials steeplechase.
SR: Actually, I was the first guy not to make the final. It was the best performance at that time for me. It was a breakthrough result as far as I'm concerned.

MR: Did you have a sense that this would be a breakthrough race?
SR: To tell you the truth, I didn't know that I was what you would call a "mudder," somebody who likes the mud. When you get a race like this, anything is possible. Whoever is mechanically sound for this kind of terrain will do well. I never thought of myself as that. In fact, the last muddy race I ran at Nationals, I got 47th place. That was in Greensboro (North Carolina, in 2000). When I woke up this morning, I looked out the window and thought, ah, it ain't gonna happen.

MR: But you did better last year, right?
SR: Yes, I was 12th last year. So I've been improving.

MR: What do you think made the difference this year?
SR: I think it was the way we approach training. We train specifically for cross country, although the field we used for training wasn't this muddy. But at least it was grassy, and we used spikes, and we felt like it was specific training, directed to cross country racing. In the past I used to work out indoors, and it's not the same. When you hit the mud, you don't know what hit you. So I think the specific training really came through for me. I also changed my mileage. Early in the season I started doing 100 miles a week, but for only a month. This was the first time I ran that kind of mileage, and I really think it made a big difference.

MR: Are you training with a group, in the World Class Athlete Program?
SR: With Arturo Barrios. Arturo is the coach, and we've got Ryan Kirkpatrick, a national champion on the roads; we also have a few guys who aren't in the military, but train with us, like Clint Wells. He's made this team before, but he was feeling a little off today. We have a bunch of good guys, Chris England, Scott Goff, Phil Castillo, and a couple of milers. Chris had a good half marathon not too long ago. We have a good group of people.

MR: And you were training specifically for cross country.
SR: Yes, and what's funny is that I went to an indoor race after doing all this cross country running, and wasn't expecting to do necessarily too well, but I ran 7:58 (for 3,000m). And that's when I knew I was on, because you train for cross country, and your indoor track comes, as opposed to training for indoor track, and nothing comes. And the way I ran in the company that I had today starting the race. I don't know if you noticed at all, but I was like the second guy around that first turn. It was the confidence that I had from the training that we did, and also the racing that I've done indoors.

MR: It seemed like a lot of the guys who made the team put themselves in position early.
SR: That's right. I outsmarted a lot of guys who could have beaten me today. You're not going to pass anyone when it's like that. That's how it is.

MR: Are you concerned at all about being able to continue racing with the international situation being what it is?
SR: Well, I'm actually going on another trip next week, to France, for the World Military Games, and I would say if anything, that will be a first-hand experience of what's going on. [Lausanne,] Switzerland, I don't know, but France for sure, they don't want to be with us. So I'm going there first, next week. We'll take it from there. The race in Switzerland, that's in a month. I'm thinking by then, things will have cooled off, hopefully. But we'll see what happens in France first. I told Dan Browne, this team is one-third Army.

(Interview conducted February 15, 2003)