Duncan Mackay : Athletics
In distance running it takes a lot to impress a Kenyan, especially if that Kenyan happens to be Moses Kiptanui, acknowledged as one of the best athletes to come out of Africa.
The most articulate and thoughtful of men, Kiptanui is not given to hyperbole, but when recently asked to rate the potential of Daniel Komen, the 21-year-old fellow countryman he helps coach, he was unrestrained in his praise.
Daniel is someone truly exceptional, he said. Of all the athletes Ive seen, hes the most talented. He is capable of breaking a world record every time he runs.
Komen, the world 5 000m champion, is one of up to 20 Kenyan runners who live in Teddington at this time of year. Their careers are managed by Kim McDonald, an agent whose office is located in this west London suburb.
Today Komen trains only a few kilometres from the Harrow fields where Roger Bannister ran before becoming the first sub-four-minute miler two generations ago. But Komen has the capacity to run two sub- four-minute miles back to back, with no rest.
At Hechtel in Belgium in July, that is exactly what he did. Warming up for the world championships, he clocked 7min 58.61sec for two miles, covering the first mile in 3.59.2 and the second in 3.59.4 the same time Bannister ran on that epoch- making night at Oxford in 1954.
This was the prelude to the world-record binge that Komen and Haile Gebrselassie were to enjoy after Athens. After a controversial defeat by his Ethiopian rival in Zurich, Komen sliced more than two seconds off the world record for 5 000m with 12.39.74 in Brussels.
My aim is to hold every world record from 1 500m upwards. Im not being big-headed but the way my career is going it is a target I would like to realise, said Komen
McDonald is confident that his client is capable of more record-breaking feats and that he will establish himself the best runner ever to come out of Africa. There is a combination of factors, he said. Physically he is one of the very few athletes who can run the last two or three laps as well as he can run the last lap. Obviously he has a wonderful natural talent but it is harnessed to a down-to-earth attitude, a healthy work-ethic and, very importantly, real self-confidence.
Komen comes from the Eldoret region of Kenya, a patchwork of thatched huts, vegetable plots and yellow-green maize fields that has bred more than its fair share of great athletes. Indeed an unparalleled concentration of top-flight runners has emerged from this peasant district of a Third World nation.
It is the rural areas which provide the athletes, said Kiptanui. In some places it is impossible to drive, so people have to run to school and back. It really is like that.
Komens story is typical of those told every time another great Kenyan runner appears, seemingly out of nowhere. I first knew I was a good runner when I was seven and used to look after the cattle and sheep on my familys farm, he said. I always used to outrun the animals.
The athletics world has become accustomed to their pace. No one is astonished any more at seeing a procession of Kenyan front-runners strung out in a flotilla as they approach the finishing line. What makes Komen and his team-mates so consistently fast? Komens favourite drink is tea, and there is no evidence that any of the Kenyan champions has ever swallowed anything stronger than PG Tips.
Daniel and I were not born to be champions, Kiptanui insisted. It is only because of the training we are doing. Africans are brought up differently to the Europeans, who have a much more comfortable life.
Komen and his fellow countrymen cannot afford Corinthian ideals. Their summers are designed to fund purchases of land or property in Kenya. One of Komens proudest achievements came last year, when he broke the world 3 000m record in Rieti. This enabled his mother to give up her job selling potatoes by the roadside. He is comfortably in the millionaire category already and knows he will probably never have to work again.
Kenyan athletes often come, win, earn their money and go. They baffle us with their ability and their engaging mixture of pride, shyness and 24-carat modesty. We never know most of them as personalities, yet it would be unfair to stereotype them all as monosyllabic in the mould of Ngugi and Wakiihuri. Komen is much more at home with the press.
I enjoy the fame, he said. Its good to know Im possibly the best runner in the world at the moment. It does not bother me that I am called that.
Inevitably the burn-out rate is high among the Kenyans. Theirs can be a butterfly existence. They run too fast and too often, frequently breaking records five years ahead of their time, but under the guidance of the wise Kiptanui and the canny McDonald one suspects that Daniel Komen will be around for a few years yet..