Michael Finch
If there is an unwritten law in world athletics, it is that a Kenyan will always win the 3 000m steeplechase on the track and always take the gold medal at the World Cross-Country Championships.
That’s the way it has been since the events were invented and that’s the way it will stay.
Or is it?
Enter Hendrick Ramaala, a University of the Witwatersrand law graduate, but a man who has scant respect for unwritten laws like that and who is a genuine medal contender for this weekend’s World Cross-Country Championships that take place in the muddy quagmire of the Belfast countryside.
As far as the 27-year-old Ramaala is concerned, the new superpower of world middle distance running lies at the bottom of Africa not in the east, and he’s inspiring others to believe the same.
Last year, the likeable “Witsie” finished second in the World Half-Marathon Championships to lead South Africa to the men’s team title in a shock victory over the Kenyans.
Sure, a Kenyan (it was Paul Koech on this occasion) won the race, but the fact that Ramaala, Gert Thys and Abner Chipu all finished in the top 10 to wrest the team prize was an indication that South Africa is not the sleeping giant it was before.
This year Ramaala has been full value for his outspoken predictions that have served not only to inspire a lot of interest in this weekend’s championships in Belfast, but have given many hope that the Kenyan hold on the individual trophy could finally be broken.
Without getting over enthusiastic, Ramaala’s chances of winning are as slim as sinewy arms … but there it is nevertheless a chance, which is more than anyone would have dared predict in the past five years.
The Kenyans, like hyenas, hunt in packs sending out one of the members at various stages of the race and forcing their closest contenders to close the gap, carefully saving their own energy for the final onslaught.
It’s a brutal strategy that Ramaala has learnt the hard way, but is now well prepared to challenge.
“I don’t mind losing to the Kenyans, because every time I lose I learn something,” Ramaala says.
In 1999, Ramaala has seen the back-end of four-time World Cross-Country champion Paul Tergat more often than he cares to remember, but this time around he’s about as well prepared as he is ever going to be.
A new South African record over 10 000m during the Absa Series in Port Elizabeth was just the litmus test he needed to judge his form and since then he has been sharpening up with national titles over 10 000m and 5000m.
Unlike the rest of the South African team, who only heard from Athletics South Africa that they had been selected two-and-a-half weeks before the event, Ramaala was assured of his place and has spent almost two weeks in Europe to hone his form.
Without doubt, this former soccer fanatic from Pietersburg, who still supports Kaizer Chiefs and Manchester United, is in the best form of his life and it’s a case of now or never.
The key to Ramaala’s success will be his ability to withstand the early pace that puts most of the field in oxygen debt before the first kilometre.
If he, and preferably another team-mate, can maintain contact until the final half- kilometre of the undulating, energy-sapping course, then there are few who will argue he has the kick to beat even the likes of Tergat.
Laws are meant to be broken anyway, aren’t they?
ENDS