HITTING THE WALL?

ELDORET, Kenya â€”  It is not even 6 in the morning, the air thin and cold here on the high plateau at 7,000 feet, the stars still twinkling. It’s so early that even the roosters are still waiting to crow.

It’s time to run.

Before the sun is up, laces are tied, shoes shuffled, a bit of stretching run through. And then it’s off onto the red dirt roads, the earth barely visible in the half-light. There, for one, is Moses Tanui, the two-time Boston Marathon champ, 36 years old, out the door at 5:45. But he is hardly alone.

Pounding the red dirt are dozens of other young men and women. They sail past towering eucalyptus trees redolent of camphor, glide by jacarandas in full purple flower, roll through tea plantations that hug the hills like a vast green carpet. They run long and hard and fast.

This is the place that in the 1960s and ‘70s produced such famous names as Kip Keino, Henry Rono and Mike Boit, that begat a running revolution that made this East African nation famous the world over for the class of its athletes--and, not incidentally, the class its athletes displayed.

In recent months, however, the storybook picture that has long been Kenyan running has been shaken by a series of events that rocked the nation’s athletic establishment, contributed to an erosion around the world of Kenyan prestige and again raised provocative questions about the influence among Kenyan athletes of performance-enhancing drugs.

The Kenyans are still strong. Odds are high that a Kenyan will win the Los Angeles Marathon this Sunday, signaling the advent of the 2001 racing season. A Kenyan won the L.A. race the last two years.

However, while Kenyan runners had come in recent years to assume a cloak of virtual invincibility, Keino concedes, “No more. At least not for this moment.�

To begin, Kenyan performance at last year’s Sydney Olympics did not meet expectations, Kenyan or otherwise. The medal count--in all, seven--was consistent with previous Games. But Kenyans faltered in races that have been their strongholds.

For instance, no one running in the red, black and green Kenyan colors made it to the 800-meter men’s final--almost unthinkable for a country that in recent years has dominated middle- and long-distance racing. More galling to the Kenyan establishment was that Wilson Kipketer, a transplanted Kenyan running for Denmark, took silver.

In the men’s 5,000 meters, no Kenyan won a medal. The Sydney Games marked the first Olympics since 1984 that a Kenyan failed to place in the top three at that distance. Compounding Kenyan embarrassment was the men’s marathon. Only one of the top 80 finishers was Kenyan--Eric Wainaina, who took a bronze medal in 1996 in Atlanta and won silver in Sydney.

Then, a few weeks after the Games, in the Chicago Marathon, Khalid Khannouchi, born in Morocco but now a U.S. citizen, finished first. A couple weeks after that, in the New York City Marathon, an event won the previous three years by Kenyans, the first man across the line was Abdelkhader El Mouaziz of Morocco. He won by more than two minutes, an eternity in elite marathon racing. Second was Kenya’s Japhet Kosgei, who said afterward: “I struggled, used all my strength. I have never struggled in a race.�

Meantime, Kenyan Simon Kemboi, a 400-meter runner, was sent home from Australia before the Olympics after flunking a drug test. According to published accounts in Kenya, he tested positive for EPO, a synthetic hormone believed to be in wide use by world-class athletes. EPO stimulates the production of red blood cells. More blood cells mean more oxygen-carrying capacity. That enables users to train longer and harder.

A few months before Kemboi’s dismissal, Kenyan Delilah Asiago flunked a drug test at a race in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Both she and Kemboi are now in the midst of two-year suspensions imposed by the worldwide track and field governing body, the International Amateur Athletic Federation.

In Kenya, alarm bells have sounded.

“We are going backward,� Tanui declared in a recent interview. The Olympic 800, he said, was a “disaster.�

“We are going through a major metamorphosis,� offered Patrick Sang, a silver medalist in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

Outsiders, too, see reason for concern--though the tone of their comments is more measured.

“They were weaker than normal at the Olympics, and everybody noticed it,� said Amby Burfoot, winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon and editor of Runner’s World magazine.

John Manners, who has lived and taught in Kenya and over the years has written numerous articles in the track and field press about Kenyan runners, called the current state of affairs a “prolonged slump,� but one that will pass.

He and others blame the “slump� on a variety of factors. Most often mentioned: the importance of internal politics. Also believed to be a factor: the influence of money and agents on runners, many of them from simple backgrounds, who can now race a circuit in Europe and win thousands of dollars, even fancy cars.

“It used to be that you would go into sport with the ultimate goal of representing your country,� Sang said. “Now the ultimate goal is to make money.�

Peter Rono, the Olympic gold medalist in the 1,500 in 1988 in Seoul, recently posted a lengthy and scathing opinion piece on a Web site aimed at Kenyans living abroad.

Kenyan running, “this great source of pride and unity,� Rono wrote, is “under threat,� primarily from bungling bureaucrats.

The Olympic men’s marathon team, he said, was replaced weeks before the Games; no one is still quite sure why. A Kenyan court selected the nation’s entrants in the 400-meter hurdles after a dispute over selection procedures. Former national coach Mike Kosgei, a proven winner, was not taken to Sydney because of a feud with Kenyan track and field officials.

“Kenyans can not close their eyes when such glaring mismanagement threatens to undermine a sport that brings all Kenyans together and provides us with international respect, pride and identity,� Rono wrote.

The great Kenyan running adventure was launched in the 1960s. Kenyan runners won three gold medals at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, though only a few dedicated trivia freaks and track nuts remember Naftali Temu, who won the men’s 10,000 meters, and Amos Biwott, winner of the steeplechase.

The third gold medal winner remains one of the most famous Olympic champions of all time--Keino, who defeated American Jim Ryun in the 1,500.

In 1972, Keino won the Olympic steeplechase, Boit came in an unexpected third in the 800 meters--and the future seemed boundless for Kenyan athletes.

Then, though, came politically sparked Kenyan boycotts of the 1976 and ’80 Games. Predictably, it took a while to bounce back.

The runner who almost single-handedly sparked the resurgence was John Ngugi, several times a winner at the world cross-country championships and the 1988 5,000-meter Olympic champion. According to Manners, Ngugi’s ferocious training regimen, a break with Kenyan tradition (Keino was known to put in only three workouts per week), made plain a simple progression to other Kenyans: In training, run long, run hard, run often.

Then win.

A Kenyan has won the Boston Marathon every year since 1991.

In 1996, Kenyans finished 1-2-3-4-5 in Boston.

In New York in 1999, Kenyans finished 1-3-5-6-8.

What passes now for a Kenyan slump is still, by any measure, solid.

Last year in Boston, Tanui finished third and other Kenyans finished 4-5-6-7-8-9. In Chicago, where Khannouchi won, Kenyans finished 2-3-4-5-6. In New York, Kenyans went 2-3-4-8-10.

Of the 100 best marathon performances by men in 1998, 35 were Kenyan. In 1999, 45. Last year, 40.

Kenyan Benson Mbithi won last year’s Los Angeles Marathon. Kenyan Simon Bor won in 1999. Twelve of the top 20 runners who as of this week had committed to Sunday’s 26.2-mile race are Kenyan, according to marathon organizers.

A basic truism of managing a first-rate marathon remains unchanged, L.A. Marathon President Bill Burke said: “The Kenyan runners, at this point in time in history, bring legitimacy to any race they enter.�

Others, however, have wondered if that very legitimacy is tainted by drugs.

Ngugi, for one, was given a four-year suspension in 1993 (later shortened on appeal) for refusing a drug test. His supporters maintain the incident resulted from a cross-cultural misunderstanding.

In 1997, a Chicago Tribune article pointed out how times had been dropping significantly in several long-distance events in which Kenyans excelled; the article also noted a rise in the numbers of African runners living part or all of the year in Europe, near coaches in Spain and Italy.

It is well known among track aficionados that many Kenyans are now sponsored by shoe and apparel maker Fila and have opted in recent years to train with Dr. Gabriele Rosa, who runs a sports medicine clinic in Italy. Rosa used to train professional cyclists--a fact that, after the scandal involving EPO that marred the Tour de France in 1998, is viewed by some with new significance.

Rosa could not be reached for an interview. However, he has consistently denied wrongdoing, once telling Burfoot of Runner’s World: “I am sure absolutely that the Kenyans are not doping. They will not even take an aspirin.�

“Most people would say [doping] is not the reason for the Kenyans’ success,� Burfoot said in an interview.

Manners added his belief that Rosa is clean: “I think he’s got an arrangement with Fila that dries up in a second if some guy, some disaffected athlete--and there are plenty--tells a credible drug story to the press.�

He also is emphatic in his belief that Kenyan runners as a group are clean. In his experience, he said, most Kenyan runners won’t even take anti-malaria pills--viewing them as mambo ya wazungu, which he said roughly translates from Swahili as white man’s business, not an appropriate concern for an African.

Given that attitude, which Manners said prevails in spite of malaria symptoms that have sometimes stricken world-class Kenyan runners before big meets, it seems implausible that Kenyans would be drawn to EPO or other chemical enhancements.

Nonetheless, Manners said, the incident involving Kemboi before the Sydney Games gives ammunition to “the myriad of skeptics out there who believe that anyone running as well as the Kenyans are running must be doing it on dope.�

“It looks--I don’t know how to put it--it was really not good for Kenyans,� marathoner Tanui said.

Anyone familiar with the nuances of elite-level marathon running has noticed the obvious--the Kenyan “slump� has occurred precisely in the period of time after the first-ever announced test for EPO instituted by the IOC in time for the Sydney Games.

Don Catlin, head of the Olympic-sanctioned drug-testing lab at UCLA, said, “That’s the whole tragedy of the drugs-in-sports issue. You can’t be a top-notch athlete in a sport where drugs are found without someone alleging you’re using them, without any substantiation.�

He asked rhetorically: “What’s to prevent the Kenyans from being pure and natural and doing well because they live in a high-altitude environment and walk hundreds of miles to school and that sort of thing?�

There it is--the storybook version of Kenyan running that evolved with the emergence of Keino, Boit and others. But that was then.

Now, Frank Shorter, the 1972 Olympic marathon champion who is head of the new U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, does not single out any runner from Kenya but said scrutiny of all its athletes deserves to be intensified: “I hope the world can get through the denial of feeling there is some pristine place left where the temptation to do illegal things can never penetrate.

“They’re subject to the same temptation. They come from the same human pool.�

Boit, still active in running circles in Kenya, said: “We need to be working with all our athletes. It is possible to set world records and to run fantastic times without having to resort to drugs.�

He paused, then said slowly and with emphasis: “It is possible.�