M ohammed Ahmed made history for Canada at the 2020 Summer Olympics, bringing home a silver medal in the 5,000-metre, and, like me, he’s a part of a Somali-Canadian community that doesn’t tend to get much coverage during Black History Month. Hoping to do something about that, I reached out to him for an interview and had the pleasure of speaking with him on New Year’s Day via Zoom from Portland, where he’s currently training. Even through the screen, his personality shone. He was prone to making big gestures to emphasize his points, his smile was a constant and he spoke with an obvious passion for sport, which has been a vital presence in his life from his boyhood playing soccer in Eastleigh, Nairobi to the Olympic podium and beyond. Over the course of our two-hour conversation (edited here for length and clarity), we spoke about his childhood, career, faith and identity — and his mission to inspire future generations to take up running, and Somali kids, in particular, to pursue the...