Kenyans seek to cement cross country legacy
The Kenyan national team in the residential training camp at the Kigari Teachers College Embu has been reviewing YouTube videos of the World Cross Country Championships' previous editions on a TV screen daily, and one of their favourites is the 1988 senior and junior men’s races.
Coach Julius Kirwa shook his head as the race progressed, awed by the running prowess of the Kenya senior men’s team led by John Ngugi and Paul Kipchoech. They are so much into this video because Kenya’s finest will compete in the 44th World Cross Country Championships in Bathurst, Australia, the first time the championships are being held in Oceania since Auckland, New Zealand, in 1988.
Kenya staged a coup de grace in the championships when they were held in Oceania for the first time at the Ellerslie Racecourse, Auckland, New Zealand, on March 26, 1988.
John Ngugi, who won his third straight world title, led the late Paul Kipchoech to victory.
Ngugi was timed in 34:32 minutes for 7.5 miles.
He beat Kipkoech, the reigning world 10,000 metres champion, by 22 seconds while 41-year-old compatriot William Koskei was third.
A worthy example to emulate: John Ngugi (centre) raises the arm of compatriots Paul Kipkoech (right) and Kipsubai Koskei after the trio took the top three positions in the 1988 World Cross-Country Championships.
This race was held 15 years after the inaugural IAAF World Cross Country Championships took place in Waregem, Belgium, on March 17, 1973, attracting 285 athletes from 21 countries without any Kenyan representations.
Tunisia and Morocco were the only African nations in attendance with Tunisian Abdelkader Zadeem being the best at 20th position.
Finland’s Pekka Päivärinta won the men’s event with Scotland’s Jim Brown (Junior) and Italian Paola Pigni-Cacchi taking the women’s race.
The women’s junior race was to be introduced in 1989 as the championships continued to grow in status.
Päivärinta’s victory, just one-tenth of a second ahead of the Spaniard Mariano Haro - 35:46.4 to 35:46.5 - remains the closest in the championships’ history.
Kenya had no cross-country programme. There was no radio or television station to amplify this event.
Only a few lines in the foreign briefs column mentioned these championships and in the local dailies.
The Glasgow Herald, founded in 1783, and the eighth oldest daily newspaper in the world, was the only publication which gave full coverage to the championships.
The only association between Kenya and the Belgian edition, which was to be held two decades later, was Jos Hermens, a member of the Dutch team which finished 12th in the teams’ standings and who established one of the most successful athletics management companies, Global Athletics Communications which manages renowned athletes such as world marathon record holder Eliud Kipchoge and Middle distance superstar Faith Chepng’etich.
Ngugi led his compatriots in winning eight of the top 10 positions. This was an admirable progression for the men’s squad which finished third behind Ethiopia and the United States in 1981 and finished fourth, third, fourth again, and second the next four years before Ngugi earned Kenya’s first world title in 1986.
John Ngugi is interviewed after the senior men's race during the National Cross-Country Championship at the Ngong Racecourse on Feb 17, 1996. Ngugi finished 96th out of 261 athletes but officials and athletes described his performance as promising.
In addition, in the men’s junior races, since 1988, Kenya has won every team title except one (Ethiopia triumphed in 1998, with Kenya a scant four points behind).
Winning the world title was everything for the Kenyans in Auckland.
But they had other plans.
A $500,000 loot a week after the championships in Indonesia offer was too juicy to ignore.
Note that there was no prize money in the world cross then until 1997.
About this time, one of the wealthiest individuals in Asia, then timber tycoon Bob Hasan, had founded the world’s richest road race, the Bali 10-kilometre race which had a prize kitty of $143,000 in 1987.
But Hasan announced before Auckland that he will be offering a bonus of a million dollars for the persons who would break the world record in the men’s and women’s races.
He offered the Kenyans a vacation, a limitless choice of food and drink with the possibility of making mistakes in their preparation for the race.
A farmer sells her milk to a vendor as the Kenya's junior team trains at Kevote area, Manyatta constituency, Embu county on February 04, 2023.
But they didn’t swallow the bait.
Ngugi and Kipkoech flew from New Zealand to Indonesia to chase the cash.
Sadly Ngugi arrived without any road racing shoes. Frantic phone calls to Jakarta saw to it that a selection of shoes was flown to the tropical paradise island and Ngugi was able to choose a pair, though they were less than a perfect fit.
Both men missed the record by a second, with Ngugi taking home $10,000.
Tomorrow: The Kenya winning template in World Cross Country Championships has remained unchanged for the last 37 years
Timelines
- The 1982 edition was moved from Warsaw to Rome after martial law was declared in Poland;
- The first senior medal ever won by an African came despite Mohamed Kedir miscounting laps in 1983;
- The youngest woman (Zola Budd at 18) and oldest man (Carlos Lopes at 38) both won in the same year, 1985;
- From 1992 to 1995, Catherina McKiernan of Ireland won four straight silver medals;
- Prize money was only introduced in 1997;
- Short-course races were run from 1998 to 2006;
- In 2001, the race was moved from Dublin, Ireland, to Ostend, Belgium, after a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Ireland;
- Kenenisa Bekele in 2002 became the man to pull off the career sweep, winning junior, senior, long, and short titles;
- Bekele went on to win the long and short races five years in a row, from 2002 to 2006;
- Tirunesh Dibaba in 2005 became the first woman to finish the career sweep;
- In 2010 Ethiopia won all four individual and four team titles. BY DAILY NATION
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