By David Martin · 2007 · 6 min read

Perspectives On Kenyan Marathon Running

FeatureVol. 11, No. 1 (2007)20077 min read

It just might be true that never before in history has a single country so dominated an event in track and field and distance running as Kenyan men have dominated the marathon during the past five years. Breaking 2:20:00 in the marathon has long been considered the benchmark for elite athleticism in this event: racing the distance averaging at least 5:20 per mile. In 2005, as shown in figure 1 on page 66, 490 out of the 1,126 sub-2:20:00 men’s marathon performances worldwide were achieved by Kenyans—that’s 43.5 percent of the total! Far back in second place was Japan (106 performances, or 9.4 percent). Even more astounding is the quality of Kenyan marathon achievements:

Daniel Njenga began athletics as a steeplechaser, setting a world junior record in 1994. He has a marathon PR of 2:06:16, with a second-place finish at Chicago in 2002. He finished third at Chicago in 2005 (2:07:14, shown here) as part of the 10-Kenyan sweep of the top places that year.

Victah/www.PhotoRun.net

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Paul Tergat finished second in his first three marathons (London 2001—2:08:15; Chicago 2001— 2:08:56; and London 2002—2:05:48) and then fourth at both Chicago in 2002 (2:06:16) and at London in 2003 (2:07:59) before his world record 2:04:55 at Berlin in 2003. The record still stands.

490 448 373 349 296 304 254 216 159 86

110

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1984

1990

1983

1989

24 21 18 19 32 11 17 18 22

1988

1987

1986

1985

1982

1981

500 475 450 425 375 350 300 275 250 225 200 175 150 125 100 75 50 25 0

1980

Number

Figure 1 The # of Sub-2:20:00 Marathon Performances by Kenyan Men: 1980-2005

Year

of the 401 sub-2:15:00 performances recorded worldwide in 2005, 199 were by Kenyan men (49.6 percent)! And on the world all-time list of 50 fastest marathon performances (as of the end of 2005), 29 of those belonged to Kenyans; the remaining 21 were divided up with a few each among the United States, Brazil, Japan, South Africa, Ethiopia, Portugal, France, and Morocco.

Kenya is a little smaller than Texas, with a population of 34.7 million, a 40 percent unemployment rate, and a life expectancy of 48.9 years. The country is divided into several ethnic groups. The Kalenjin (12 percent) are the most talented at distance running, followed by the Kikuyu (22 percent) and the Kisii (6 percent). The marathon dominance by the Kenyans is a relatively recent phenomenon, starting in the late 1990s and developing with no really good explanation. Taking a brief jaunt back into history provides some interesting perspective. The first sub-2:20:00 marathon performance by anyone over the standard 42,195-meter marathon distance was 2:18:41, by Jim Peters of England on June 13, 1953, at Chiswick, England. The first Kenyan man to break the 2:20:00 marathon barrier was Joseph Kinyabi, running 2:16:31 at Kisumu (in Kenya) on June 6, 1976 (table 1 on page 68). Thus, 23 years elapsed from the time of the initial sub-2:20:00 marathon until a Kenyan runner achieved it.

NO LONG-RUNNING DOMINANCE At the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games, Kenya sent two marathoners, who placed 19th (Naftali Temu) and 48th (Paul Mose). In the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, Kenya’s lone entry in the marathon (Richard Juma) failed to finish. In the Montreal Olympic Games, Kenya was one of the boycotting nations, and it also

sent no marathon runners to the Moscow Olympic Games of 1980. Why Kenya was apparently uninterested in the marathon is a mystery. As seen in table 1, Kinyabi’s performance was 1,637th in the historical sequence of sub-2:20:00 performances recorded worldwide. Thus, it was not the Kenyans who initiated the breakthrough in racing marathons during the decade of the 1960s but rather the Japanese (table 2 on page 69) and the Americans (table 3 on page 69). As seen in figure 2 on page 70, Japan has been unique in maintaining a steady development of talent over the past 25 years. Figure 3 on page 70, on the other hand, records the dramatic falloff in top-level marathon achievements by American athletes that began just after the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, for reasons still not clearly understood. Table 1 also points out that the majority of early Kenyan top-level marathon performances were achieved by Kenyan athletes on academic scholarships in the United States, attending schools such as the University of Texas at El Paso and helping to make them powerhouses in sports such as cross-country. Since 1984, shown in figure 4 on page 71, despite the worldwide boom in marathon activities, the annual total of sub-2:20:00 marathon performances has remained remarkably constant. You might have expected instead during this nearly 20-year period—when the world record quickened by 3½ minutes, from

TABLE 1 The First Dozen Kenyan Sub-2:20:00 Marathon Performances:

1976-1983 Joseph Kinyabi