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Kenyan athletes train at high altitude, at about 2,130 meters, where the rarefied air improves blood oxygenation capacity, increasing performance at lower altitudes.
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At Iten, about 5,000 runners train together, creating a supportive environment that stimulates mutual improvement and collective motivation.
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Many Kenyans run to escape poverty, using prize money to support their communities, which adds a strong personal motivation to their efforts.
Most of the world’s major marathons have been won at least once by Kenyans.
The holders of the two world records in marathons are a man and a woman: Kelvin Kiptum won the men’s one on October 8, 2023 at the Chicago Marathon with a time of 2h00’35” (and sadly died in a car accident a few months later), while Ethiopian Tigst Assefa holds the women’s one of 2h11’53”, set on September 24, 2023 at the Berlin Marathon. If one analyzes the data of the competitions of the last decades indeed one is astounded: Kenyans and Ethiopians have indeed won every trophy and are objectively and numerically the strongest runners in the world, although the former outnumber the latter.
How is this possible? What secret do they have?
The city of champions
Iten is the city from which so many of these champions come. It rises about 2130 meters above sea level on the Rift Valley plateau and has earned the nickname “City of Champions.” the fact that from such a defined place on planet Earth comes such a concentration of superfast men and women has not failed to attract the attention of scholars and journalists. What exactly makes that city and region the perfect factory of champions? There is no comprehensive and definitive answer, but many elements combine to define a picture that, even if only partially, can help to understand what is so special about those very roads on which future world record holders run from an early age.
The context
Let’s start right from the roads. You don’t have to imagine the paved roads you run on but dirt roads, full of potholes and obstacles and dusty. The surfaces on which the Kenyan champions run are training in themselves: they do not guarantee that they will express maximum speed, but they certainly train the body for stresses and changes of pace that are difficult to manage.
Of course, it’s not just about training in borderline conditions. Air quality and composition also matter: training at more than 2,000 meters with temperatures ranging from 10 to 26°C is different than doing it at sea level. The reduced amount of oxygen in fact makes the bodies of these athletes more capable of oxygenating the blood (and bringing more oxygen to burn to the muscles, thus more energy) when they “go down to the valley” to do the races, because the lower the altitude, the greater the amount of oxygen.
Another key element seems to be that of community. Five thousand runners train in the city of Iten, and on Thursdays some of them train in groups. In 400. That’s right: on Thursdays each week, group training is quite crowded but for a good reason: there are many of them, and the support they get in comparing and helping each other is irreplaceable and impossible to get if they trained alone.
The beginning
The first Kenyan world-class athlete was Kip Keino, who won gold at the 1968 Olympics in the 1,500 meters despite suffering from a gallbladder infection. Even in his home country, where of course he was always running, he was considered a bit of a weirdo because unlike others (there “running” is a means of transportation, not a sport) he trained. They called him “The Windseeker” because he seemed to run after the currents.
The motivation
Another factor that helps explain such a concentration of champions is the determination with which they train. In this particular case, however, it is a different motive than that of many parts of athletes from rich countries. “Kenyans don’t just run for something or other: they run to escape poverty.” There are not many other sources of income in these regions, and certainly one of the most solid and promising is winning prize money. Only to return them to the community because the champions, back home, are revered as rock stars, as Malcolm Gladwell says. But, unlike rock stars who enjoy the money for themselves, they resist as much as possible to the community what they have gained: they fund schools, buy homes for their family members, until they reach an existential crossroads. The pressure of being champions can turn into a conviction to keep winning but also a powerful motivation to keep giving it your all. Welsey Korir, winner of the Boston Marathon in 2012, feels very empowered to continue to achieve success: back home he has funded schooling for 300 children and supports 2,000 farmers. It may well be said that he is no longer doing it for himself but because he has made a commitment to them.
A little bit of Italy
There is also a bit of the Belpaese in Kenya: it answers to the name of Renato Canova aka “The Magician.” He lives much of the year in a hotel in Iten and coaches 15 Kenyan athletes. He somewhat twists the perspective that Kenyans are the strongest in the world: he says,“One should not ask why they are so strong but rather why we Europeans have become so weak.”
We have the most flanked and assisted sport in the world (not really in Italy, but in short), camps to train on, coaches, sports doctors, controlled feeds, machines and computers. Yet athletes from a very poor country not assisted in the least by local politics (there is only one clay athletic field in Iten), with very few if any economic resources manage to excel. How is this possible? Another European coach who has created so many Kenyan champions, missionary Brother O’Connor, says he doesn’t really know what secret Kenyans have but certainly running is not something they feel is imposed on them-they do it instinctively.
A few shadows
Unfortunately, even Kenya has not been spared from doping scandals. Between 2004 and 2018, 138 athletes tested positive for doping tests. However, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) determined that, although numerous, these were unrelated cases and not dependent on a “Kenyan Method.” In short, this is not an institutionalized trend supported by the national federation but rather the result of the overwhelming pressures that certain athletes are under who will do anything-even illegal things-to get results. But the consequences they face are very heavy: while for a Western athlete a disqualification means no longer being able to compete, for them it translates into a return to poverty and no longer being able to support their family and community.
Once again the sense and strength of the group returns: that which helps in difficulty and to which one returns out of a sense of belonging and to resist what has been given. Successes are to be shared, like training on Thursdays, along with 400 other runners running, hoping one day to make it.
(Via Business Insider – cover photo by Edskoch)