MORGANTOWN — Over the next week plus, NBC-TV and its Olympic broadcast partners will be giving us some of the most amazing stories on athletes who have taken any of a number of incredible paths to London, be they from the wilds of Africa, the sands of the Middle East or the rain forests of South America.

There is one story they will not tell, one that comes right out of West Virginia, a story of an athlete who probably won’t even get to compete but who has come out of nowhere to live at least part of an Olympic dream.

Clara Grandt came out of tiny West Union, where she was a four-time All-State cross-country performer at Class A Doddridge County High while setting the state single-A records in the 1,600- and 3,200-meter races in track.

But really, she was hardly a blip on the radar screen nationally.

“I was hardly known outside my hometown and the state, and there I was a year later in the nationals,” she marveled back in 2008. “There were more spectators there than I’ve ever seen, and I got to see some of the best college runners in the nation.”

If she had arrived on the national awareness with her performance, she hardly could have imagined that at the 2012 Olympics she would earn a spot as an alternate in the 10,000 meters, that coming a year after she had run her first marathon in the greatest marathon of them all in Boston and posted a 2:59:24 time that gave her a 16th-place overall finish, third among American women.

Now 24, she had been thinking of trying the marathon for a long time.

“I started thinking about it in high school,” she told Running Times magazine after the Boston Marathon. “I admired the hard work you have to put in to run a marathon. I looked up to Deena Kastor and Paula Radcliffe. I thought they were just awesome, especially because, at the time, my best mile time was their marathon pace. I never set limits on myself and always wanted to be like them, so I set out on my path.”

If Grandt has anything it is a driving desire, pushing herself right from the start at West Virginia University, urged on by coach Sean Cleary.

“When I first came to WVU, I had a stress fracture in my knee, so I talked with Sean a lot. He motivated me, made me believe in myself more,” Grandt said. “After talking to him, you believe you are the best runner in the world.”

Upon graduation from WVU, Grandt knew she wanted to keep her running career going, but despite the collegiate success, she didn’t even get a modest sponsorship nibble from a shoe company or an offer to join a training group, so she opted to do her own thing in Morgantown under Cleary’s guidance.

Hers hasn’t been a life of luxury, although she has gained affiliation with the Mizuno-sponsored Riadha Track Club, which has helped with equipment and money, but her workouts are more on her own than with teammates.

“I have the essentials and am very appreciative of everyone who has supported me to this point,” said Grandt, who works 10-15 hours a week as an aquatic therapist and aquatics instructor at a health and rehabilitation center in Morgantown. “I’ve just tried to use what I have around me. It might not be ideal, but it’s worked so far.”

While her story is inspiring, she recently revealed in a blog that she wrote for Mizuno the real heart of her story, a family twist that has offered her inspiration as she has seen her younger sister straighten out a life that seemed to be heading off in the wrong direction.

The blog was written in May of this year, and it told of how she returned home to speak at the local elementary school, and while there she took in a track meet in which her sister, Rachel, the youngest of six children, competed.

A junior, Rachel was in her first year of competition and that, by itself, far outweighed any result she would get out of the race.

“I never really understood Rachel when she started growing up,” Grandt wrote. “She didn’t seem to care about anything or have any goals. I always thought she got what she wanted and never appreciated anything. It seemed like she was constantly causing trouble and stress for my family.

“I was not proud of her, and wondered, ‘How could we be related?’ She ran away from home once, and then the state put her in a home for troubled children. She continued to make mistakes and had to stay there for about a year. Not long after she came back home, she got pregnant. ‘Sixteen and Pregnant’ is a show ... not something that was supposed to happen in my family.”

Yet it turned out to be the blessing that a child is supposed to be.

“Well, nine months later, which was this past November, Rachel had a little girl. I was so worried my mom would take all the responsibilities for little Alexandria (the baby), and Rachel would continue her careless ways. Instead, she went back to school, stayed out of trouble, her grades went up, and she acted like a mother to her child,” Grandt revealed.

She went out for track and while she wasn’t an All-State performer, she had become an All-American as a mother and a family member.

There was, Grandt was sure, a lesson for all in this.

“Sometimes I think being the youngest of six children, she got caught up in feeling inferior and unsure of what she was capable of as the youngest. She has overcome and bettered herself so much though, and I think she realized that it’s not who you are compared to others, but who you are compared to yourself from the day, month or year before,” she concluded in her blog.

“She has made herself an example of the saying, ‘It’s not where you’re coming from; it’s where you’re going.’ I think every runner can relate to that quest.”

Email Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com. Follow on Twitter @bhertzel.