Runners like Wilson Kipketer are made of a material from which myths and legends erupt. The petite, elegant runner has made his mark on athletics - world-wide as well as in the Danish history of sports. In November 1997 he was elected as nothing short of the best male athlete in the world. He creates one world record after another in the 800 meter distance.
Kipketer's unusual running talent has to be appreciated by personal inspection.
As an audience during the two track rounds that make up the 800 meters, you'll see the enjoyable sight of a rather small, well-proportioned body, light as a feather, rhytmically gliding across the glorious red track surface.
You'll watch breathlessly as he increases the velocity on the last 200 meters, as it appears as if the other runners has already stopped running.
With a huge, warm smile, that might be a grimace, he breaks the tape at the goal. He hasn't been defeated since September 1995.

Many myths

A legend is already in progress around the former Kenyan who arrived in Denmark in 1990, invited by an athletic fanatic, Ove Bjørn Kraft, who had a dream of creating star runners so that the athletic field might once more become of interest to the media and to the sponsors, no less.
The myths about the Kenyan and East African runners are multiple. Often they are linked to the unrecognized assumption that regard the African runners as "natural creatures", who mysteriously emerge from the bush land and assisted by their genetic combination has supernatural powers that enable them to out-run everybody.
The myths are concerned with the runners' food, by the idea that the warm blood from cattle mixed with milk might be the cause of their endurance. It has even been speculated that a special medication administered to the runners has empowered them with the ability to run at high altitudes. This, it is said, gives them an advantage over the "White" runners when they compete in Europe and the United States.
Along with the myth of the genetic combination comes the myth that the East Africans might have a special muscle combination, that makes it easier for them to collect and store oxygen.
Most of the myths has a biological point of departure, but there are more culturally focused myths as well. One of these states that the African way of life is undemanding and relaxed - this is a modern variation of the old myth that "negroes are lazy". Perhaps based on the notion that many of the African runners appear effortless and still manage to out-run their European fellow competitors.
Myths can be tales based on nonsense or (conscious distortions, and this imply notions of causes, that are based on wrong information or distortions of reality.
Many journalists have attempted to "reveal" the secret behind "The Adventure of African Running".
"Close to the Riddle", one of the head lines claimed. Reading the articles, one discovers that nothing has been revealed.
One of the exceptions was told some years ago by the journalist Poul Martinsen from Danish Radio's Documentary Group. It occurred in the emission "The Black Gold". Poul Martinsen had prior, intimate knowledge of the data he used, as he'd been coordinator in Kenya for developing workers who were sent by Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke.
The reality about the African runners needs to be researched through many and varied aspects - and it's impossible to pursue only one angle of the story of these East African runners.
Wilson Kipketer is Nandi and though this people constitute only two percent of the 25 millions of Kenya's inhabitants, it is none the less remarkable that members of the Nandi people has earned almost half of the medals, Kenya has attained in the great athletic competitions, such as the Olympic Games and the Worlds Series.

Back in history

The Nandis are one of Kenya's 42 ethnic groups. They come from the highlands, Rift Vallaey, that cuts a wedge from Ethiopia in the North extending in South Eastern direction towards Tanzania.
The Nandis has - ethnically speaking - their source of origin with the nomadic people, the Kalenjin, who like the Masaï are renowned for their wonderings with cattle in the East African savannas. Originally they were warriors and had persistent adversities with the Bantu people concerning the vast grass lands.
In 1906, the British colonial power defeated the Kalenjin group. But the British were never at ease with the selfconscious and proud Nandis. Contrary to the Masaï the Nandis settled in the highlands of Rift Valley, and became permanent inhabitants.
The Kikuye originates from the Bantu people and make out 21 percent of the people of Kenya. The Kikuye has also fostered great runners, so the myth about certain genetic predicaments causing the Nandi dominance of the running tracks may easily be repudiated.

The first medal

It was the British colonial regime that introduced organized sports in East Africa. The British and the Germans constructed the railways still present in the area. They were the means by which the raw materials were exported, and these raw materials were the reason for having the colonies.
The British engineers and railway workers spent a great deal of their spare time on sports such as tennis, cricket and soccer.
The Kenyan Athletic Association (KAAA) was formed in the 1940s & 1950. Consequently serious competition and training programs for coachs came into being, as well as systemizing the talent recruition.
The first time Kenya participated in the Commomwealth Games was in 1954 and in the Olympic games in Tokyo in 1964 Kenya achieved its first medal; it was Wilson Kiprugut Chuna, who attained a bronze medal in 800 meters track running.
Four years later Africa had a huge break-through in international sports. A Nandi, Kipchoge Keino, won gold for the first time for an independent African nation by gaining gold on 1,500 meters. Kenya got 8 medals at the games and since then the East African countries has dominated the athletic fields in medium and long distance track.

The private boarding schools

Many of the schools in East Africa copied the English school system after the independence. Sports had a dominationg - and educating - function. British coaches were often employed, such as John Velzian who coached Keino.
Private and public boarding schools were developed in Kenya, often initiated and backed by missionaries and economic sponsors.
Wilson Kipketer comes from the private boarding school St. Patrick High School, where the students are between 15 and 18 y.o. The school is renown for having supported many of the world's best runners, among these Peter Rono, who had gained Olympic Gold at 1500 meter. Wilson Kipketer states, that it was peter Rono who spotted his talent, when he was at St. Patrick and later came to Denmark.

Vegetarian diet

On of the most stubborn myths about the African runners has been the composition of their diet. But a Danish researcher, Dirk Christensen, has repudiated that the diet had any specific influence on the excellent highland runners from the Nandi tribe.
Together with the physiologists Bent Saltin and Henrik Larsen from the August Krogh Institute (Copenhagen's Medical Research University) they traveled to Kenya a few years ago to test some 30 runners, respectively from St. Patrick High School and the neighbouring school in Marakwet.
The researchers performed both physiological tests and interviews. Simultaneously they brought some Swedish runners along to Kenya in order to compare these to the African runners.
The researchers consluded, that the diet was almost 100 percent vegetarian. The only animal material digested by the young African was milk and a very tiny amount of meat.
The runners cover their energy need mainly by the main nutritional source, which is corn (served as ugali) and brown beans.
The diet is both rich on protein and carbo-hydrate. In addition, they consume some green salads and a small quantity of eggs. Consequently, it turned out that their diet wasn't very mysterious, but low in fat, which is evidently necessary for endurance sports such as running.
The physiologists didn't find any remarkable results in connection with the physiological tests - nor when they compared these to the results from the Swedes.
What they found, though, was that the East African runners trained vastly harder than their Swedish colleges. This both as far as the intensity and the amount of training.
They gave an account of the Kenyan runners competing with each other during the evening training, whereas the morning training was more sedate and calm. Furthermore it was observed, that the East African runners' basic training was infinitely better, and that the training was efficient and relatively well organized.
Despite the fact of these runners living in the highlands, this couldn't explain their superior running quality on the long distance, as lots of long distance competition athletics today may stay at high altitudes during long streches of training and thereby achieve the same advantage.
The high altitude training may increase the concentration of red blood matter in the blood, due to these matters function of transporting oxygen and at the same time increase the oxygen's ability to be released into the muscles.
Finally one may say that the high altitude training may cause the lactic acid is removed more efficiently from the muscles when the runner is tired.

Run to school

Most Africans in East Africa live in the country, and while they're young the boys are often trusted to herd the cattle. Wilson Kipketer has done this, as well.
The writer of this article has tried to herd cows for a few days and can confirm, that it involves a great deal of running and excercise.
When the young boys and girls starts at school, this school may often be located at quite some distance from their homes. And it isn't unusual that the pupils may walk - or what is more appropriate and in line with the present article: run 4-10 kilometers to school all five days of the school week. Sometimes they even run home during their lunch break to eat. This adds up to quite a lot of kilometers every year during the at least seven years they go to school.
This is the basis for an enormous ability in the endurance sports at long distance track. At the same time the young boys and girls have their tendrons, joints and muscles trained to a degree that in no way matches with our own school-bus children's.
Yet another explanation on the Nandi's vast dominans on the running tracks is found in the personal motivation, runners such as Kipchoge Keino and Peter Rono has had. Keino has dedicated his life to sports and everyone in the area knows him. Also, more and more of the locals has attained the interests, so that most running starts lends a hand to training and competitions, when they're at home and returned from their running circus in Europe or the US, or returns after their running careers.
On top of the direct motivation from their teachers, there is an economic and social motivation present. A good deal of money can be gained at foreign competitions and the many street marathons around the world. An average Kenyan may gain app. six DKK (app. 1 US$) per day, and at a competition one may easily gain 100,000 DKK (app. 1,400 US$) as the best runner, which makes it evident that its an attractive occupation to be a runner.
It is said that a lot of officials in the Kenyan athletic associations get their share of the cake, too.
Right when Wilson Kipketer arrived in Denmark he had no great desire to train very hard. It didn't mean as much, because he could easily manage in the competitions with the best European runners, and there were no Danes at all that could match his talent.
In Kenya it would have been different, because the amount of potential is huge. As a direct consequence Wilson didn't progress very fast during the initial period of his stay in Denmark. When he changed the club he ran for to the major league Sparta, where his personal coach became the Polish Slavomir Novak, who has influenced Wilson to train seriously and as intensively as in Kenya, his progress has been excellent.
But progress for talented sports practitioners when they train very hard is no mystery.

Motivation

There is, as it is evident, no mystical explanations to the East African runners' success. Talent, motivation, the basic running culture found in East Africa, a fat-deprived though protein- and carbo-hydrate enriched diet, a motivation deriving from former running stars and the possibility to rise socially by the aid of money awarded in competitions, along with a training program that is hard and compelling, are aspects that improves talents such as Wilson Kipketer's.
Finally it may be added, that the rythm between hard and systhematic training and the playful means a great deal to the continuous motivation. A renowned and leading physiologist, professor Bent Saltin, who headed the earlier mentioned research in Kenya:" ... better let the young play and have fun, instead of making it all too serious for them".
When you watch Wilson Kipketer run, it appears rhythmic pulsating and playful rather than hard work.
A true artists' talent to combine potential and hard training with the playful and pre-conscious, where one doesn't deliberate rationally, but allows the bodily rythm and pulse to expand and live entirely in the present.

Niels Larsen is a cultural sociologist and a former editor of Dansk Atletic Forbunds newsletter, Atletiken. Through many years he's been involved in East African sports- and body culture, and will once more travel to Tazania and Kenya on a research journey in February.

Translated from Danish by A. Berry

djembe@inform-bbs.dk

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