John Velzian coaches the Kenyan athletes so he’s well qualified to reveal the secret of their success
ATHLETICS: Julian Drew
IT was on a Friday evening in July 1954 at London’s White City that the barefooted figure of Chepkwony from Kenya went to the line for the six miles at the English AAA championships.
In those days European athletes like Emile Zatopek, Chris Chataway and Gordon Pirie dominated the longer distances. The world knew nothing of the dormant talent which lay in the heart of what was still referred to as the “Dark Continent”.
Chepkwony was up against Pirie in that race and although both subsequently retired, the Kenyan impressed observers with his early front running. The following day Nyandika Maiyoro repeated Chepkwony’s brave front running in the three-mile race. He eventually faded to third as Fred Green beat Chataway in a desparately close finish to set a new world record.
The British magazine Athletics Weekly, a leading authority on the sport at the time, was moved to write, “Chepkwony proved, however, as did his colleague Maiyoro on the Saturday, that it is a fallacy that the coloured athletes cannot run long distances.”
A prophetic statement indeed. Standing in the crowd was a young student of physical education who had gone to London University and Carnegie before ending up as an athletics coach at Loughborough University.
He too was inspired by the Kenyans that weekend. John Velzian’s sense of adventure took him to Pakistan a few years later as a teacher with the British Overseas Development Corporation.
In 1958 when his contract finished he was due to go to Cyprus but renewed hostilities there gave him a free hand to go where he wanted and he chose Kenya, the land of the gifted runners who stirred his curiosity four years previously.
Velzian was unlike the majority of colonial representatives who perpetuated the racial exclusivity which had been a cornerstone of the British Empire. He was immediately at loggerheads with the colonial authorities but he doggedly set about the task of building a school athletics system that would override the artificial boundaries and include everyone.
When independence came he was asked to stay on and was rewarded with the position of national team coach. Velzian has been involved with the Kenyan national team ever since.
In 1987 he became the director of the International Athletic Federation’s first regional development centre in Africa. It was in this capacity that he recently spent two weeks in South Africa conducting a coaching course.
Velzian’s 37 years in Kenya have given him a unique insight into Kenyan culture and the reasons behind the incredible success of its athletes which he has witnessed from the very beginning.
“I think if I look for the foundation of that success at the beginning it was the school system,” says Velzian.
But while the all-encompassing scool system that he set in place provided the conduit which brought talent to the surface, Velzian says there are a number of reasons why the Kenyans have so dominated middle and long distance running in recent years.
“One thing you must never lose sight of when talking about Kenyan athletes is that Kenya is an incredibly talent-rich society and for that there a number of reasons. Firstly, they have a similar genetic structure to people from the Ethiopian highlands where you find a dominance of slow twitch fibres in the muscles,” says Velzian.
These slow twitch fibres are characteristic of people who are good at endurance events, as opposed to fast twitch fibres which are associated with explosive events like sprinting and jumping.
What seems to be another strong pointer to the Kenyan’s athletic success is where they live. Few Kenyan distance runners come from the low lying coastal areas. “The best runners are born at altitude and live all their lives there. Altitude plays a very important role in the middle and long distances,” says Velzian.
But he believes the world has yet to see the best of Kenyan athletics. “I wrote an article some years ago titled ‘When the nomads settle down’. I believe so much of our talent lies with our nomadic people like the Turkana and the Maasai. You can’t say to a Maasai after he’s spent 12 hours wandering with his cattle, ‘Come on let’s go down to the track for a nice interval session’. He doesn’t want to know. But put him in a different environment, as happened to Paul Ereng (the 1988 Olympic 800m champion who is a Turkana) who went to a school for underpriviledged children in Nairobi, and you have a different story,” says Velzian.
He also believes a lot more talent will start to come out of the urban shanty settlements through the lure of the big money successful Kenyan athletes can earn. “At the national stadium in Nairobi we are surrounded by a massive slum settlement called Mathari Valley and yet the track is empty 30 days a month. They are the next phase of our plan and when we get through to them you are going to see an incredible growth in Kenyan athletics,” he says.
The rest of the world’s athletes will tremble at the mere thought of yet another wave of seemingly invincible warriors on the track. “Another important factor for the Kenyans has been the stability the country has had over the last 30 or 40 years. When I first went there we couldn’t even beat the Ugandans but now Uganda can’t even raise a team because of the civil war they’ve had there,” declares Velzian.
This was mirrored in South Africa between 1984 and 1989 when the running boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which produced a string of great athletes like Matthews Teman eand Mathews Motshwarateu, suddenly dried up as the townships became ungovernable.
The lifestyle of the Kenyans is another strong factor in their success. “The region where most of our runners come from is rich in carbohydrates. The maize is of an extremely high quality and there is a wide variety of foodstuffs available. You don’t see any Kenyans dying of starvation,” says Velzian.
“They are also very hardy people for whom a 10km run to school or work is part of everyday life,” he says.
South Africa has many parallels with Kenya. The roots of the people are similar and many in South Africa live at altitude, although not as high as in Kenya. Life is tough here also and many black people can be seen jogging to school in rural areas.
What we have in our favour, perhaps, is a better access to nutrition and certainly superior facilities and coaching. All that is required now is a school system like the one Velzian created which can bring all South Africans into the sport.