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It is the most bountiful wellspring of sports talent anywhere in the world. A tiny pocket of africa producing an army of enduring athletes that dominate distance all over the world.

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They're the Kalenjin – born high in the Kenyan air and truly born to run, and run, and run.


As any marathon time keeper or Olympics track marshal can attest, no group runs longer and stronger than the Kenyan tribe. And no end of time and motion white coats, human movement boffins and track and field know alls have theorised a reason – diet, DNA, tribal custom – or is it just the air up there?


While they scratch away on their notebooks, the Kenyans just keep on staying and winning without a highfaluting sports psychologist or a sprung training track in sight.


Katy Cronin on the legends of the long road.

Runners training in Rift Valley
Music
16:00

Cronin: They’re born and raised in high country, upwards of two thousand metres above sea level. Here, life is like one big altitude training camp.
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Everywhere they seem to run and run.
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Along the red dirt roads fanning out from the central Kalenjin town of Eldoret.


Through this one pocket of Kenya that’s offered up the world’s most successful middle and long distance runners.
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FX: Kids playing
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School children
Cronin: Here, and in every school in the Eldoret area, playtime seems to be running time.
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Not surprising, considering who lives up the road, where he looks after hundreds of Kenya's orphans.
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Kids singing
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Kip Keino in classroom
Kip: I feel that what I'm doing to our Kip Keino children's home is very important. We share what we have, we live together and that’s the most important.
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Kip Keino is a father-figure to these children and in many ways is the father of distance in Kenya.
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Kip: There’s nothing behind it -- it’s only hard work -- and love… if you love the event you're doing.
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Kip
So for those things you have to have courage… mental prepared… physically and mentally fit… you will be ready to perform very well.
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Olympic Games footage



Kip Keino performed very well indeed at the pinnacle of competition, the Olympic Games in 1968.
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Battling a gall bladder infection, Keino ran in the 10,000, collapsed, yet got up and finished the race. Four days later, he took silver in the 5,000, then won gold came in record time in the fifteen hundred.
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Kip: Running is mental -- I must tell you... any running is mental. The mind of an athlete works like a computer… and you can have the strength -- you can have the speed -- but if you don’t have the mind to drive and to plan how you can run the race then all the speed you have is useless -- and the strength you have is useless. But if you don’t have courage for yourself then there’s nothing.
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Rift Valley scenery
Music
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Cronin to camera
Super:
Katy Cronin
Cronin: If you drew a one hundred kilometre circle around this point in the Great Rift Valley, you’d find three quarters of Kenya's middle and long distance medal winners. These are the lands of the Kalenjin people - Kenya’s running tribe. Their remarkable athletic success seems to come down to a combination of tribal traditions that place great value on Stoicism and courage, tough high altitude training and in more recent years -- money.

Porridge preparation/breakfast
Cronin: It’s early morning at an elite training camp near the town of Embu and a dedicated team of food technicians prepare a breakfast of champions.
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Many of Kenya's bright new distance stars are here, carbo loading on maize porridge and - with little refrigeration - protein as fresh as it gets.
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Athletes in training
You don’t have to spend much time here to realise the facilities that propel Kenya's competitors onto the world stage are rudimentary, even makeshift. This is, after all, a teachers' college - the athletes share this compound with 1000 students.
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And there’s no favouritism -- promising up and comers limber up with accomplished champions like Paul Tergat.
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Tergat: Most people think that maybe Kalenjins are have something special... I must assure you they have nothing special -- and it’s a lot of really hard work - simple as that -- and that is our secret. There is nothing like magic. I don't believe that there's anything like magic, because what I know is that the way I'm training, I'm training so hard, that if there were any magic then I should not be training. I should be able to sleep, and wake up and go and win.
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Athletes training
Cronin: Tergat’s a five time world cross country champion and an acknowledged force in the marathon. He’s also rich. Road race prize money, appearance fees, sponsorships and endorsements have made him a millionaire, and a motivational model for runners eager to break out of their subsistence world.
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Kimutai
Kimutai: I hope money comes later. Something which comes later. You must be nationalistic at heart - being a Kenyan.
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Kimutai Kosgei is one of those inspired by the success of Tergat, but like his hero he claims money takes a back seat to national pride.
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Kimutai: Being Kenyan is number one. It's what keeps you going. You need money for training, you need money to buy food. So those one comes later, but first winning is for the nation, the other ones will follow.
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Runners training
Cronin: The runners may have claim to have their Kenyan hearts on their singlets, but it’s money that motivates their agents.
These athletes can be bought from the Kenyan amateur athletics association for one thousand U.S. dollars each.
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The agents - usually backed by a sporting goods multinational - put up the runners' training and travel expenses, but take 15 percent of prize money in return.
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Kip: We used to run for the name of the country and the name of the athletes, but today that has changed quite tremendously - the athletes now are running for themselves. That’s the money - they chasing money,
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Kip
Super:
Kip Keino
Former Olympic Champion
also their agents also have a pressure to make sure that they compete in several events so that they can be able to earn something.
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Athletes training/Dan
Super:
Dan Muchoki
National Chief Athletics Coach
Dan: Whoever is having a Mercedes here, the upcoming athletes, the juniors also looking for that Mercedes, how can I get it. By getting it, they have to work hard, and now with the senior athletes we have here, they are talking to the juniors. They say you must work you must have discipline and such to succeed.
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Athletes running towards camera down road
Music
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Cronin: For Kenya's athletic officials the boom in agent representation and the clout of a lucrative professional team program financed by the Italian shoe giant Fila, means it’s sometimes tough to keep the national squad focussed on national pride alone.
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Mary
Super:
Mary Chege
Kenya (Amateur) Athletics Assoc.
Mary: Let’s not money to be ahead of yourself as a person.
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Cronin: For the newly selected cross country team bound for Europe, an earnest message about priorities.
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Mary: Please remember, god first, your country second and yourself third. Thank you.
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Brother Colm talks to athletes
Br. Colm: But if you run in the right way, and if you start off slowly, you will find that it’s very enjoyable and it's not as tough as you think.
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It was god that brought this man far from his native Ireland to Kenya in 1976, but it wasn’t long before brother Colm O’Connell would make running his second religion.
Colm: Like most people in the sixties and early seventies
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Colm
Super:
Colm O'Connell
St. Patrick's School
I had seen the Olympics on TV and I knew of Kipchoge Keino, but as regards ever visualising I would become involved or be a coach it was the farthest thing from my mind.
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Singing
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The teacher turned coach presides over one of the world’s most remarkable sporting nurseries -- St Patrick's college, in the heart of Kalenjin country. The school's been so successful, he's lost count of his champions.
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Colm: I never really set out to produce so many athletes or to even focus on the world scene.
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Brother Colm
But many of them who pass through our system are lucky to be able to continue in the sports and reach such heights.
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Kip
Kip: I must say Brother Colm has performed very well and he has motivated a lot of Kenyans - we are proud to have him here and we are proud of what he’s doing for the athletes of this country.
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Brother Colm and Cronin look at photos
Cronin: Brother Colm, show me here, we've got one of the newest but great stars of this school.
Colm: Yes, this is Japhet Kimutai, one of the recent products of St. Patrick's. He's the world junior record holder.
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Cronin: This is St. Pat's wall of fame. There would be few other schools with a whole honour roll of Olympic champions.
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Brother Colm and Cronin in garden
Outside there's also a rapidly expanding garden commemorating old boys made good on the world track.
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Colm: You can see some of the older athletes, their trees have grown rather tall. The recent athletes have rather smaller shrubs because the headmaster told me to keep them small, because this place is becoming like a forest. So we may have to find a new site after Sydney.
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Guys and sally run down road
Cronin: The record shows Kenya's men are an awesome force, but increasingly the road warriors are women.
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Sally: We were just running like school girls and boys, we didn’t know nothing about something which might have been a star in future.
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Cronin: Sally Barsosio is now a major, but she was spotted by Colm O’Connell after a 3k race at a primary school carnival when she was only nine.
Colm: I remember after the competition, she went and sat down under a tree,
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Brother Colm
not to take off her shoes, she ran barefooted as many of the primary school kids do even today..
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Sally: So then he told me do you mind flying. I told him what’s a fly? I mean what’s flying. He told me to go overseas by plane. So I tell him, I don't mind, because it was something new to me.
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Colm: And of course she was thrilled by the idea of seeing the inside of an aeroplane, more so even than running. So it was there we became first acquainted, and for the next six years I was coaching Sally. Right up to the time she won the world title in ’97 in Athens.
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Runners on road/bus follows
Music
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Cronin: Sally Barsosio is just one of a wave of female front runners from Kenya.
Cronin: Where are you going to be in September this year?
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Sally
Sally: I think if all goes well I have to be in Sydney.
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Singing
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Sally: You see in Kenya everybody's a champion. And there are the young ones who are just upcoming, but we are going to try that. In God’s will we have to be in Sydney.
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Singing
13’05
Credits:
Reporter: Katy Cronin
Camera: Geoffrey Lye
Editor: Stuart Miller
Research: Adrian Bradley
Producers: Ian Altschwager, Steve Taylor
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