I Met Some Men in Africa….

As Charlie has noted, he’s off to Kenya and I’m in the editor’s chair while he’s gone. I thought I’d start off my time here with some recollections from the past.

Ten years ago several journalists were invited to take a trip to Kenya to visit the country and the runners. For those who covered the sport of long distance running, not to mention being curious about Africa, it was a dream opportunity. I had met Kenyans in this country. We competed against them in college when I ran for Bowling Green State University back in the 1970s. At that point they were like an exotic species. Talented, mysterious visitors from another world. They were just beginning to emerge on the world stage in athletics. They came to America on athletic scholarships to get an education both in the classroom and on the running track.

They had the as yet untapped talent. We had the knowledge base of coaching expertise and a high school and collegiate system to help our athletes develop. They had the ability, and they’d come to the US to learn how to use it. Our first encounter with the Kenyans came at a collegiate relay meet in the Carolinas. We were on a spring trip in 1972 that took us through North and South Carolina to the Florida Relays and back. On a cider track in North Carolina we were running a medley relay with our soon to be Olympic champion Dave Wottle running the anchor leg. It was 800 meters and Dave got the baton at least 50 yards behind a team from North Carolina that was anchored by Robert Ouko, a 400/800 meter runner who was one of the best in the world. We stood by the track cheering Dave on, all the time thinking that the best we could do was hold on to second place.

The first lap of the race did nothing to change that view as Ouko maintained his lead with Dave trailing well behind as the bell sounded for the final lap. Then, much like things would happen months later in the Munich Olympic final, Wottle began to gain ground. By the home stretch, we were jumping up and down, yelling incredulously at Dave, who had made up the gap on Ouko and was fast approaching the Kenyan. A few strides before the finish, Dave shot past his exhausted rival and won the race. We didn’t know it then, but what we saw was almost a carbon copy of the Olympic final. The Kenyans, at that time, only knew one way to run, from the front and fast from the start.

It would happen again in the ’72 Olympic final as Mike Boit and Ouko took the field out at a blazing pace with Dave trailing in last place coming off the first turn. As the pace took its toll on the rest of the field Dave inched his way to the front, and by the home straight was again in position to run down his rivals in the homestretch. Dave ran the Olympic final with nearly even splits, so the appearance of a blazing kick in was really a reflection of the carnage the fast early pace left behind on the front runners and those who followed. They all tied up and were unable to resist as Dave went past them and dipped at the line to defeat the diving Russian for the gold medal. In a way, Dave had the Kenyans to thank for helping him win. They had the talent, but had not yet learned the tactics and training necessary to mold that raw talent into places on the medal stand. One who had was Kip Keino.

Keino had traveled the world picking up information and tips from the best. In Mexico City he had run multiple events from the 10,000 to the 1,500, which he won, employing team tactics in that race where he had teammate Ben Jipcho go out fast in the rarefied air of Mexico City to set a pace that he was more suited to handle than his sea level trained competition. Not long after, in the summer of ’73 I was at a meet at UCLA and encountered Steve Prefontaine, who was watching in the stands after having set an American record at 10K earlier at a meet in Northern California. We were talking about that race when Pre looked up and waved to a man standing at the top of the stands, dressed in his running gear, as was Pre. It was Keino. The pair was going on a training run together, each picking each other’s brains on training routines, race strategies, and life in general.

When I met with Keino in his store in Eldoret In 1999 he talked about that process, those intelligence gathering missions. “We learned from you,” Keino said. He talked about he and other Kenyan athletes would watch and listen, figuring out what other athletes were doing and what might work for them. Developing a mental arsenal to go along with their physical talent that allowed them to get the most out of themselves and adapt to the racing scene to the point where, prior to when I left for Kenya, I’d had a conversation with Vin Lananna, who was then coaching at Stanford, about what we might learn from the Kenyans. Africans were not the dominant distance running community in the world. What were they doing that we could learn from, Lananna wanted to know. Do they have some hidden secret? Is there something they are doing that we aren’t?

I didn’t find any hidden secrets. I saw a host of talented runners who worked very hard every day and were motivated to succeed by both economic and social rewards. Kenyan athletes could become financially secure through success on the track or roads. The money they could earn there was enough to allow them to become independently wealthy back home, take care of their families, and live well. The flip side of this was that athletes were often targets of the huge social disparity in the country between the rich and the poor. Robberies, often in broad daylight in the center or Nairobi or populous areas, more often in the dark of night or along the roadways, were common and athletes who were known to have profited from road racing were the targets.

Life in Kenya was hard. It was my first visit to a Third World country and though you read about how different life is, it doesn’t really hit home until you see it. Nairobi then had the resemblance of a US city with some modern hotels, office buildings, and stores, but more of the look of a Wild West town than a metropolis. Outside of Nairobi and into the countryside or small towns, such as Eldoret, there were fewer and fewer of what we would call “modern conveniences.” Most of the homes were more like huts with no hot or cold running water. Paved roads were few and an adventure. Most of us in the van that transported us from place to place were reduced to “white knuckling” as the vehicle sped down the pothole strewn roadway, weaving between the holes and swaying busloads of people with their suitcases and belongings on the tops and sometimes people hanging off the sides.

Downtown Eldoret had a main street lined with one story shops with stucco exteriors and minimal interior decoration. Amusingly, one of the few “western” products on the grocery store shelves were cans of Pringles potato chips. Keino’s “athletic store” in the middle of downtown had more books and school supplies than running shoes or athletic equipment. There was more need for the school stuff than athletic things at that time of year, said Keino, when we talked to him in his small one-room office in the back of the store, which contained not much more than a desk, chairs, a few bookcases, and some posters on the wall. A large “flea market” adjoining the downtown took up more space than the traditional businesses along the main street. The reaction of the people in and around town was mixed. The children often looked at us musunga, the Kenyan name for white people, with wide eyed wonder.

When Amby Burfoot and I went on a run through a shanty-like neighborhood near our hotel, the kids often ran along side us, laughing and reveling in the sight of these strange visitors. The adults viewed us differently. When I took a taxi ride back from Eldoret to Nairobi, the driver stopped about midpoint along the route and picked up a white plastic canister of gas to fill his tank. As we were sitting by the side of the road, a woman came up to the side of the taxi and pleaded with me through the window to take her with me back to America. In Eldoret the men often stared at us with a mixture of fear or contempt. We were outsiders. I remember thinking this is what it must be like to be an African in a European or American city and how it is to be viewed and evaluated primarily by the color of your skin. In Kenya we were the outsiders or the remnants of a colonial past that was not viewed with pleasant memories. The divide in the society was great. You were either rich or poor, one tribe or another, nothing in between. We were warned not to go out at night and told stories of how thieves would hijack people driving at night by throwing tacks onto the pavement to puncture the car tires. When the occupants got out to change the tires, the thieves would ambush them. And not only foreigners were targeted. Anyone with money or driving a nice car was a prime target.

Thus, many athletes attempted to hide their wealth and avoided media attention or other notoriety in their home communities because of the potential consequences of being targeted by thieves. When we visited marathoner Moses Tanui at his house near downtown Eldoret, we were met at the large iron door that allowed entry through the wall surrounding his property by a guard. He looked at us and talked through a peephole in the door, much like one might expect to find in an illicit gambling joint in a major European or American city. It was a stark recognition of the price of fame in a country where the government was corrupt and the law was more “Wild West.” You lived by your wits, guile, and force—the law of the jungle.

The way to wealth was through a career in athletics. Some used their athletic talent to get an education and pursue a career outside of Kenya. Most, however, took the knowledge and money gained outside the country and “reinvested” it back in Kenya. The bought cattle. They bought land. Tanui and Tergat started companies and an athletics magazine. They and other former top level athletes attempted to gain some control within the sports establishment and agents, who would often prey on athletes, stealing from them or skimming off portions of their winnings for themselves. Instead of developing talent, those in charge of Kenyan athletics were often accused of attempting to benefit from the accomplishments of the athletes through their positions in the athletics establishment.

For most of the athletes, the goal was to earn enough money to be able to invest in land or a business in Kenya that would support their families. Most didn’t have long careers. They retired before they had reached their peak because they had made enough money and didn’t like the lifestyle of a world class athlete that involved long hours of intense training and time away from their families. Some fell victim to alcohol and a lifestyle of excess. Henry Rono’s battle with the bottle is the most well known, but when we were in Kenya you could hear stories of others who reportedly succumbed to the temptation. If there is any secret to the success of Kenyan distance runners, however, it’s the depth of the talent pool. For every athlete who falls off, there are several others ready and waiting to replace them.

We were guests at a cross country meet in Eldoret where several races were held with wave after wave of talented runners—some outfitted in shoe company sponsored shoes, shorts, and singlets, others barefooted and wearing hand me down running outfits—tried to outrun each other in highly competitive battles. The competition for the top spots was intense. Just as the US Olympic track trials are said to be often more competitive than the Olympics, the Kenyan cross country trials is viewed by many as a more competitive event than the IAAF World Cross Country Championship. In fact, the few foreign runners who ran in the Kenyan XC meet ended up placing higher in the IAAF championships than they did in the Kenyan championships. In wasn’t until years later when I attended a retirement party for one of my college teammates that I realized that what we can learn from the Kenyans is that what is necessary to succeed at the highest level in athletics is this depth of competition. Runners at the top of the sport pushing themselves just to make their country’s team.

It was the secret to the success of our cross country team at BG. We were a group of talented runners who competed hard, not only on the track but everywhere else. As Wottle recalled we competed in everything, whether it was against one another in a bowling match or a game of pool. Wottle was the most competitive of us all. Bob McOmber, who would go on to run a 2:17 marathon, remembered playing pool with Wottle. Dave was losing the match as it reached it’s best two out of three limit when Wottle declared that they weren’t going to stop until he got back on top. Eventually he did. In Kenya the competition is equally intense and the depth of talent is large. All you have to do is look at the marathon. For a variety of reasons it was an event where the Kenyans had only modest success until recently. Now, the current generation of Kenyan men’s marathoners has begun to dominate the event as much as the cross country team has that segment of the sport.

Sammy Wanjiru won the Olympic marathon by virtually breaking every rule in the marathon racing manual. He led the first mile at world record pace on a hot day in a smoggy city in the Olympic final. He pressed the pace throughout and broke the Olympic record by three minutes on a day that was not conducive to fast times. He showed the world a new way of championship racing. It caused me to think back to a talk we had with Tanui in his living room in Eldoret. Moses had run under an hour for the half marathon at that point, won the Boston Marathon, but had not run the blisteringly fast times that we see today. Was it possible, I asked, to run a sub two hour marathon? Without hesitation he said yes. Why do you believe that, I asked? Because I know what it felt like to run a half marathon in under and hour and I believe I can keep that pace up for a full marathon, he said.

It is that fearlessness, that lack of limits in what is possible that has been the hallmark of the Africans’ rise to distance running prominence. Much of the reason fast times have not come in the marathon has been that the financial reward is most often greater in winning or placing high in a race, so race tactics are evolved around winning, not risking blowing up by going fast early, but as more and more Kenyans are running 2:04 or better for the marathon the concept of what is fast is redefined. In may have to come in the sort of time trial setting that Haile Gebrselassie has turned into an art form for setting records. Where the risk of losing is outweighed by the chance to go where no man has gone before, but Tanui’s claim that ten years ago seemed an idle boast, now doesn’t seem so far fetched. Those are my stories and memories from Kenya. It will be fascinating to read what Charlie observes during his travels there.