Kenyans looking for another Beijing success

Doping allegations overshadow race for World Championship medals, but athletics ties with China to grow

Memories of Samuel Kamau Wanjiru exploding into the Beijing National Stadium on the morning of Aug 24, 2008, all smiles and arms raised in celebration on his way to winning Kenya's first Olympic marathon gold medal, are still vivid in many Kenyan minds.

Wanjiru shattered Carlos Lopez's 24-year Olympic marathon record by winning the iconic race in 2 hr 6 min 32 sec, shaking off a spirited challenge on the streets of Beijing by Morocco's Jaouad Gharib and Ethiopia's Tsegay Kebede and Deriba Merga.

Several minutes later, I dashed out of the media center at the Olympic Stadium and joined Wanjiru, his Japan-based mentor Stephen Mayaka, and Japanese manager Katsushi Fuchiwaki and fans for a few bottles of Tsingtao beer in a pub on the outskirts of the Olympic Village to celebrate that memorable triumph.

Wanjiru's triumph crowned Kenya's great performances at the Beijing Olympics. With 14 medals, six of them gold, Kenya's exploits in the Bird's Nest were the country's best performance at an Olympic Games.

And the most memorable because it was also the first time Kenya had won women's gold at the Olympics after Pamela Jelimo and Nancy Jebet Lagat stormed to victory in the 800m and 1,500m.

Kenya's other gold medal winners were Brimin Kipruto (3,000m steeplechase), Wilfred Bungei (800m) and Asbel Kiprop (1,500m).

Kiprop leads Kenya's return to Beijing for the IAAF World Championships that run from Aug 22 to 30 at the Bird's Nest seeking to emulate the 2008 Olympic performance.

Despite the doping crisis facing the sport ahead of the World Championships, Kenyan athletes have remained focused.

Elite Kenyan runners have distanced themselves from doping claims unleashed this month in an expose by German investigative journalist Hajo Seppelt that point out the use of banned performance-enhancing substances, especially by Kenyan and Russian athletes.

In the documentary The Doping Secret: The Dark Side of Athletics aired by German TV station ARD and published in the UK's Sunday Times newspaper, Seppelt and the newspaper say they obtained a database of 12,000 blood tests belonging to 5,000 athletes, a majority of which were classed as "abnormal".

"Talented athletes don't need performance-enhancing drugs. All the cost is hard work and commitment. Those athletes who dope to become elite are actually not talented but intruders who bring shame to our sport. They don't have sportsmanship," says Kiprop in response to the expose.

Wilson Kipsang, a two-time London and Frankfurt marathon winner who is in Kenya's marathon team to the World Championships in Beijing, adds: "I want to tell the whole world that for the top (Kenyan) athletes who have been running, tests have been carried out and they have been found clean."

Athletics Kenya has since denied the reports, even as the International Association of Athletics Federations announced that it had suspended 28 unnamed athletes found to have used banned substances and competed at the 2005 and 2007 World Championships.

"Beginning in April, using the latest technology available in the field of anti-doping and taking advantage of the new World Anti-Doping Code's provision extending from eight to 10 years, the period during which samples can be tested, the IAAF made a second reanalysis of Helsinki 2005 and Osaka 2007 samples. This re-analysis confirmed a further 28 athletes had tested positive with a total of 32 adverse findings," the IAAF says in a statement on Aug 11.

"Due to the legal process, none of these athletes can be named yet," the statement adds, but went on to clarify that none of the 28 suspended athletes would be competing at the World Championships in Beijing this month.

Martial Saugy, associate professor in life sciences, and the director of the Swiss Laboratory for Doping Analyses says: "The IAAF embarked on this long-term storage and retesting strategy in 2005 to ensure that clean athletes are ultimately rewarded for their honest efforts in IAAF competitions. The IAAF is committed to use every means at its disposal within the World Anti-Doping Code to root out the cheats, however long it takes."

"The latest scientific breakthroughs in anti-doping technology and analysis have been employed in the reanalysis of these samples to allow us to find previously undetectable substances. We are at the cutting edge of the fight against doping."

But as we sipped bottle after bottle of Tsingtao with the late Wanjiru seven years ago in the Beijing pub, there was no such worry over doping or cheating in athletics at the time, but rather our conversation centered on how his victory would help improve athletics ties between Kenya and China, especially in long-distance races.

And that came to pass a few years later in 2012 when a group of Chinese athletes set up camp in the North Rift for high-altitude training in Kaptagat which is in Uasin Gishu county.

Since then, more and more Chinese athletes and coaches have shown interest in training in Kenya with a strong possibility now that China will also engage in setting up bigger training programs and facilities in the North Rift region of Kenya.

Not even the latest claims that some Kenyan athletes have been drug cheats will spirit away Chinese and other foreign athletes who continue to set up camp in Kenya's Rift Valley for specialized training, which climaxed in 2013 when the Chinese Athletics Federation appointed Italian Renato Canova to be head coach of China's middle- and long-distance teams.

Canova's engagement with the Chinese team saw the athletics interaction between China and Kenya grow tenfold, as the 70-year-old silver-haired guru of distance running is familiar with the Kenyan training regime having handled such stars as Silas Kiplagat and Florence Kiplagat, both in Kenya's team for the Beijing World Championships.

Athletics Kenya officials are now encouraging Chinese athletics managers to not only bring their athletes to the North Rift for altitude training, but also consider setting up athletics camps under a bilateral arrangement.

"These days there are more Chinese people getting into management of athletics, but what we are telling them is that besides training athletes in the North Rift, they should consider a partnership in which they will set up training camps here also," Abraham Mutai, chairman of the Central Rift Athletics Kenya, says.

Since Kenya ushered in a new constitution in 2010 that paved the way for a decentralized system of government with a county, North Rift counties have prioritized athletics.

"By working with these counties, Chinese athletics stand to benefit a great deal. As Athletics Kenya, we handle the technical issues, but the county governments will be able to offer land to Chinese groups to construct training camps and also offer them incentives to spur their investment," Mutai notes.

The Kenya-China athletics interaction has also been enhanced by the increase in quality road races and marathons in China which are flocked by Kenyan athletes, in particular the IAAF Gold Label races, such as the Xiamen, Yangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai marathons and the Jianzhen Half Marathon.

These races offer great quality, pay well, and also pay the athletes who win, most of them Kenyans, promptly.

The author, the 2012 IAAF World Journalist of the Year, is the Nation Media Group's regional editor for the North Rift. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 08/21/2015 page11)