Kenya's Olympic challenge

Kenyans have mastered the art of long-distance

By Cathy Jenkins in Nairobi

Not really knowing what to expect from a place where some of the finest runners in the world train, I had a picture of the Kip Keino High Altitude Centre as a sort of grandiose sports hall, complete with workout rooms, running tracks and physiotherapists padding about in spotless white tracksuits.

Actually it's a modest bungalow set among farm fields a couple of kilometres off the tarmacked road.

A pair of training shoes left on top of a water tank suggests that someone in the household perhaps does a little jogging - but not really more than that.

It's not until you get inside and start being introduced that you realise that you're among a very elite group.

I don't know whether the name Kip Keino meant anything to me in 1968, but certainly when he won a gold in 1972 in Munich, I was very much a fan of his and of Kenyan long-distance runners in general.

I liked the idea that the Kenyans had some sort of superior quality because they trained at such high altitude.

Superstar

To get to meet Kip Keino 28 years after Munich was not really work, it was quite a thrill.

After watching the athletes pound through the forest, looking superb, you start to think you could be out there doing it yourself

If he's home, Mr Keino eats breakfast with the athletes who are staying at his centre. He invites me, my cameraman and my producer to join them.

We arrive at the crack of dawn, having been told that the runners will be training early. But it turns out that Mr Keino's eldest son - the one who normally drives the minivan for the athletes - has gone to market to sell some tomatoes.

The fields around the training centre belong to a farm which is also run by Kip Keino's family.

Over slices of bread and peanut butter Mr Keino enthuses over the cheese which is produced on the farm and even finds its way onto supermarket shelves in Nairobi.

He's only slightly annoyed with his son who has delayed the athletes' training. Mr Keino is now 60 and he is incredibly trim looking. He also talks non-stop.

In Nairobi he is a very influential voice in the world of Kenyan athletics. At home he is the farmer, loving the land and enjoying telling everyone at breakfast about it.

Apart from my little team, the other people at the table include a Botswanan who'll be taking part in the Sydney Olympic marathon; a Rwandan who'll be competing in the 5000 metre race, and another Botswanan who's going in the 800 metres.

Flying feet

Our modest ambition, when breakfast is finished, is to drive quickly enough to keep ahead of these superstars so that we can film their training run.

Kenyan athletes go through dedicated training

This is not so easy, as the route they take is an untarmacked track through the forest which is also shared by herds of cattle and goats.

The young herdsmen tap the animals on their rumps to encourage them out of the way of the flying feet. The athletes don't miss a beat, but we in our vehicle have to be more patient and by the time we are clear, the runners have disappeared.

The rough dirt road is of course why the athletes come in the first place. Their circuit through the forest begins at 8,000 feet and climbs to nearly 10,000.

It is the high plateau of western Kenya, but you only get a sense of how high when you come to a break in the trees and look down the sheer escarpment wall to the Rift Valley several thousand feet below.

Privileged seats

Along the way are villages; small rural settlements, dusty in the dry season, muddy after rain. The people who have the trackside seats for these displays of athletic excellence are peasant farmers.

They have also seen so many Olympic runners in their lifetimes that they're a little blasé about the latest batch passing through.

In the deepening gloom I hear a noise like a growl, and even though I know there are no wild animals left in these parts, I turn and run as fast as I can back to the club house

Peter Rono, the coach, says he feels this is a little bit unfair, but what can you do in a place where world class athletes are two a penny.

When I met Peter Rono earlier in the day, he was standing unobtrusively a little apart from the athletes, and I wasn't quite sure whether he was part of the training school or not. I asked him if he'd been a competitive runner.

"Actually I have a gold medal" he said. "Seoul 1988, the 1,500 metres".

After watching the athletes pound through the forest, looking superb, you start to think you could be out there doing it yourself.

But to the unaccustomed the air is cruelly thin. It takes an evening walk on a golf course for me to realise this. In the deepening gloom I hear a noise like a growl, and even though I know there are no wild animals left in these parts, I turn and run as fast as I can back to the club house.

It's only a few 100 feet but the gentle grassy slope might as well have been Everest. I stagger inside. There my slightly bemused cameraman suggests it might have been a leopard I heard after all. He knows it wasn't but he is kind enough to say something to restore my pride.