In the 1964 Olympics, just the third ever in which Kenya competed, a Kipsigis runner named Wilson Kiprugut won bronze in the 800-meters. Four years later, in the altitude of Mexico City, Kenya was the dominant distance running power, winning seven medals in middle- and long-distance events.
[..]
“The conventional wisdom was that blacks could sprint, but that anything that required tactical sophistication, or discipline, or training,” he says, “this was the white man’s province.”
[...]
The 4.9 million Kalenjin people represent about 12 percent of Kenya’s population, but more than three quarters of the country’s top runners.
[...]
Manners wrote that a part of traditional life for Kalenjin warriors was the practice of cattle raiding. Essentially, it entailed stealthily running and walking into the land of neighboring tribes, rounding up cattle, and escorting them back to Kalenjin land as quickly as possible. Cattle raiding was not considered theft so long as the raiders weren’t filching the cattle from the same subtribe within the Kalenjin. “The raids were conducted largely at night,” Manners wrote, “and sometimes ranged over distances as great as 100 miles! Most raiding parties were group ventures but each muren [or warrior] was expected to at least do his share.”
[...]
A muren who brought back a large number of cattle from a raid was hailed as a courageous and athletic warrior and could use his cattle and prestige to acquire wives.
[...]
Korir was thrust into the 3,000-meter steeplechase — a race just shy of two miles that includes hurdles — and in his third-ever attempt at the event won the national junior college championship. Four years later, Korir was the third-ranked steeplechase runner in the world.
[...]
Or the one about Julius Randich, who arrived at Lubbock Christian University in Texas a heavy smoker with no competitive running background. By the end of his first year, 1991–92, Randich was the national small-colleges (NAIA) champion in the 10K. The following year, Randich set NAIA records in the 5K and 10K and was named the outstanding athlete in any sport in the NAIA.
Kalenjin runners became all the rage among NAIA coaches, and several others would win the 10K national championships after Randich, including his younger brother Aron Rono, who won it four straight times.
Rotich, the son of a prosperous Kalenjin farmer, arrived at South Plains Junior College in Texas in 1988, having lived a “comfortably sedentary” life, as Manners describes it. Rotich, a stout 5’8″ and 190 pounds, quickly burned through most of the $10,000 his father had given him for two years of living expenses and tuition. “But rather than return home in disgrace,” Manners wrote, “Paul . . . decided to train in hopes of earning a track scholarship.” Rotich trained at night to avoid the embarrassment of being seen. That concern would be short-lived, as he made the national junior college cross-country championships in his first season. He went on to become a ten-time All-American in cross-country and indoor and outdoor track. As Manners reported, when Rotich returned to Kenya and detailed his running exploits to a cousin, the cousin replied: “So, it is true. If you can run, any Kalenjin can run.”
[...]
Consider this: seventeen American men in history have run a marathon faster than 2:10 (or a 4:58 per mile pace); thirty-two Kalenjin men did it just in October 2011.
[...]
For example: five American high-schoolers have run under four minutes in the mile in history; St. Patrick’s High School, in the Kalenjin training town of Iten, once had four sub–four milers in school at the same time.
[...]
Wilson Kipketer, a former St. Patrick’s student who became a Danish citizen and held the 800-meter world record from 1997 to 2010, does not hold his own high school’s record.
[...]
The kids in his time trials generally come from elite, highly selective, government-funded boarding schools, and essentially none of them have any racing experience.
[...]
Each year, about half of the boys in the time trial will run faster than 5 minutes and 20 seconds in the 1,500-meter time trial, on a shoddy dirt track, above seven thousand feet. (The 1,500 is about 100 meters shy of a mile, and 5:20 translates to a mile time just over 5:40.)
[...]
In the tryout in 2005, a boy named Peter Kosgei ran 4:15 with no real training. Kosgei was accepted to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and quickly became the best athlete in the college’s history. In his freshman year, Kosgei won the Division III 3,000-meter steeplechase national title. By the end of his junior year, he had compiled eight more national titles in cross-country and track.
[...]
Evans Kosgei — no relation to Peter — held down a 3.8 GPA in computer science and engineering at Lehigh University and, after adjusting to life in America for a year, decided to go out for cross-country in his sophomore year. He struggled even to finish his five-mile tryout. But, in short order, Kosgei was running at the Division I national championships in both cross-country and track. In 2012, he was named Lehigh’s Graduating Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
[...]
As expected from their latitudes of ancestry, though, the Kalenjin and Danish boys did display body type differences. A greater portion of the body length of the Kalenjin boys was composed of legs. The Kalenjin boys were, on average, two inches shorter than the Danish boys, but had legs that were about three quarters of an inch longer.
The scientists’ most unique finding, though, was not the length of the legs, but their girth. The volume and average thickness of the lower legs of the Kalenjin boys was 15 to 17 percent less than in the Danish boys. The finding is substantial because the leg is akin to a pendulum, and the greater the weight at the end of the pendulum, the more energy is required to swing it.
[...]
Compared with the Danish runners, the Kalenjin runners tested by the Danish scientists had nearly a pound less weight in their lower legs. The scientists calculated the energy savings at 8 percent per kilometer.
[...]
Some anthropologists actually refer to the extreme of a slender body build as the Nilotic type — “Nilotic” refers to a set of related ethnic groups residing in the Nile Valley — and, it so happens, the Kalenjin are a Nilotic people.
The Nilotic body type evolved in low latitude environments that are both hot and dry, because the long, thin proportions are better for cooling.
(Conversely, the extreme of the short, stocky build was historically known as the Eskimo type, though the term “Eskimo” has been replaced in some countries, where it is considered derogatory.)
[...]
Anthropologist Vincent Sarich used world cross-country championship results to calculate that Kenyan runners outperformed all other nations by 1,700-fold. Sarich made a statistical projection that about 80 out of every 1 million Kenyan men have world-class running talent, compared with about 1 out of every 20 million men in the rest of the world.
A 1992 Runner’s World article noted, based purely on population percentages, the statistical chances of Kenyan men having won the medals they did at the 1988 Olympics was 1 in 1,600,000,000.
That’s racist.
But….but…but….Race is a Social Construct!
:-p