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Ed Cheserek Runs On

The 17-time collegiate national champion is now 25 and trying to figure out exactly who he is, and which country he will represent.

Edward Cheserek (13) in the men's elite mile on Feb. 2 at a meet in Winston-Salem, N.C. Cheserek won with a time of 3 minutes 55.74 seconds on his birthday.Credit...Veasey Conway for The New York Times

For years now, nearly a decade, Ed Cheserek’s path seemed obvious.

A gifted teenage runner from Kenya, he had become a high school sensation at St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, and then a star at the University of Oregon. A distance specialist, Cheserek could win races as long as 10,000 meters, or drop down and a run a sub-four-minute mile as needed. Cheserek won 17 national championships at Oregon, and when he graduated in 2017, he was the most decorated runner in N.C.A.A. history.

His next move seemed clear. He would become an American citizen and represent the country in the biggest distance races and the biggest competitions the way other runners born in Africa — Bernard Lagat, Meb Keflezighi, Abdi Abdirahman — had done before him.

It has not gone that way, not yet anyway. Instead, Cheserek, now 25 and back in New York this week to run in the Wanamaker Mile at the Millrose Games, is caught between two countries, trapped in a dispute involving immigration law, specialized work visas and the strange question of just how elite a runner he can claim to be.

All this is unfolding as Cheserek evolves, trying to become the runner he has always wanted to be. Like plenty of other 20-somethings, he is learning that the path to what he wants is rarely as straight, or as simple, as it once seemed.

He has moved to Flagstaff, Ariz., where he trains at elevation alongside some of the best distance runners in the world. It feels like home, he said, but his application for a green card has been rejected. Even receiving a temporary work visa, something that seemed as if it would be simple given his elite skills, has proved difficult. His lawyer uses stronger words to describe the process: “arbitrary and capricious,” though he said the difficulties went back to the years of the Obama presidency.

“All I can do is just keep running until they decide what they decide,” Cheserek said in a telephone interview this week.

Mostly, he has been very good at that. Cheserek ran the second-fastest indoor mile ever last year, finishing in 3 minutes 49.44 seconds at the David Hemery Valentine Invitational in Boston, but he is certain his greatest successes will come in the 5,000 and the 10,000.

Just 5-foot-6 but with the chiseled physique of an undersize N.F.L. cornerback, Cheserek has a stride that, regardless of how fast he is running, makes him appear to float across any distance. Other than the slightest roll of his shoulders, he is a model of what looks like effortless efficiency. Then in an instant, he produces his trademark burst of speed that, throughout college at least, almost always left his competition far behind.

“He’s a kind of freakish combination of strength and speed,” said Stephen Haas, who has been coaching Cheserek for the past year.

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Oregon’s Edward Cheserek reacted as he runs toward the finish line to win the men’s N.C.A.A. Division I cross-country championships in 2013 in Terre Haute, Ind.Credit...Darron Cummings/Associated Press

It is also what sets him apart. Consider Keflezighi, for example, the winner of the New York City and Boston Marathons and a versatile athlete who like Cheserek won national championships in cross-country and at 5,000 and 10,000 meters in college. Keflezighi has never broken four minutes for the mile. Mo Farah, widely considered the world’s most versatile distance runner, has never run a mile faster than 3:56.

Cheserek, though, has plenty of ground to make up in the longer distances before he can be considered world class in those events, where even his best times are 43 seconds off the world record in the 5,000 and more than two minutes behind the mark in the 10,000.

To be fair, Cheserek has yet to have a complete and healthy outdoor season as a professional. Haas said he was certain an injury-free cycle of training that now included 100-mile-plus weeks and faster, longer runs as Cheserek headed into the spring and summer was going to produce significant breakthroughs at the distances Cheserek believes are his specialty.

A glimpse of the future may have occurred at the Manchester Road Race in Connecticut on a frigid Thanksgiving morning last fall, when the runner known as King Cheserek at Oregon set a course record. He ran the 4.75-mile course in 21:16, beating Paul Chelimo, the 5,000-meter silver medalist at the 2016 Rio Olympics, and Andy Butchart, a British Olympian, by 30 seconds.

So does he now prefer the roads to the track? “Roads, track, I don’t care,” Cheserek said. “Running is running.”

Exactly what country he will represent is a much more complex question. Thomas Young, a Colorado immigration lawyer who has represented many athletes and now oversees Cheserek’s citizenship case, said the process had become much less predictable since 2015, before President Trump was elected.

Cheserek has said since high school that his dream is to become an American citizen and to represent the United States in the Olympics. It should be noted that American distance running teams are usually easier to make than Kenyan ones, though Cheserek’s indoor mile time last year set a Kenyan record.

Cheserek’s current challenge is that he attended Oregon on a student visa and was not able to obtain a green card while he was there, Young said. After Oregon, he applied for a green card, seeking approval on the basis of his athletic accomplishments, but was told he had not proved himself against pro runners.

“If 17 N.C.A.A. championships won’t get you a green card, nothing will,” Young said.

Until Cheserek has a green card, the clock cannot start ticking on the five years he has to wait before he can apply for United States citizenship. An act of Congress could expedite that process, but not much else. So if Cheserek, approaching his prime, wants to appear at this year’s world championships or next year’s Olympics in Tokyo, he will have to do it running for Kenya. (A later switch of nationality is allowed under international track and field rules.)

In the meantime, Young has helped Cheserek obtain a P1 visa, more commonly referred to as the athlete and artist visa. It allows people who can demonstrate extraordinary talent to live and work in the United States for up to five years because their professions require the participation of the best people in the world. (Think of foreign-born N.B.A. stars and virtuoso violinists.)

In January 2018, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which does not comment on individual cases, granted Cheserek a P1 visa for only one year rather than five.

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Cheserek has become one of the best-known runners in the United States.Credit...Veasey Conway for The New York Times

An application to extend his visa is still under review. Immigration officials have questioned whether the track meets and races Cheserek was participating in really required athletes of “international recognition,” as the statute states.

Young said the concerns about Cheserek’s schedule were unfounded because the events he wanted to run — which included the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix, the Millrose Games and the Prefontaine Classic — were among the most prestigious meets in the world, so of course they required the services of internationally recognized athletes.

Cheserek has until April 15 to file additional information. He is allowed to continue living and training in the United States until the case is decided, which may take several months.

Until then, all he can do is run. The best result he can hope for is the path of Lagat, who attended Washington State. Lagat began his career running for Kenya but then represented the United States after gaining citizenship.

“These athletes have a very short window of time to compete at the highest level internationally,” said Chris Lane, Cheserek’s agent. “We don’t want to restrict Ed from accomplishing his goals, and those include medals in the worlds and the Olympics.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section D, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Even With 17 N.C.A.A. Titles, a U.S. Visa May Be Out of Reach. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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