EDITORIAL: Can corruption create marathon kings?
The Amsterdam Marathon on Sunday started like most of the big city marathons in the world start these days. Very quickly a clutch of elite “East African” runners – i.e. Kenyans and Ethiopians – made their way to the lead, and started sizing each other up.
In the bunch there was Kenenisa Bekele one of the demigods of Ethiopian long-distance running and the current world record and Olympic record holder in both the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres.
New record
And there was also Kenya’s Lawrence Cherono, who won the marathon last with a new record. Despite this, the commentators dwelt a lot on Bekele, in a tone that suggested that we should wait for his coronation at the end of the race.
Ahead of the race, Canadian Running Magazine even said; “Those willing to get up early enough might witness history being made as Bekele contests Kipchoge’s world record at Amsterdam.”
I wasn’t sure. The iconic Ethiopian looked a bit chubby, like the rest of us whose sporting life extends very little beyond reaching for the remote and clicking through sport channels. And Bekele has really been around, much like his more storied compatriot Haile Gebrselassie, who had a furious rivalry with Paul Tergat, and hang around forever winning endless 10,000 metres championships and marathons in the world.
Barely two-thirds into the marathon, the leading pack put the hammer down, and left Bekele to lag in the Amsterdam cold. He went on to limp off the course, unable to finish.
Soon it was down to Cherono, sandwiched between two Ethiopians, Mule Wasihu and Solomon Deksisa. A commentator suggested the Ethiopians might tag-team and throttle him. Then Cherono pulled the trigger, and left his rivals all but tied to a stone behind him. He went on to shave 63 seconds off his winning time of 2:05:09 in 2017.
In the women’s race, the Ethiopians held their own, with Tadelech Bekele retaining her title ahead of compatriots Shasho Insemu and Azmera Gebru.
Cherono’s victory hightlighted three trends that have been developing in the Kenyan-Ethiopia long distance running rivalry over the last two years.
First, Kenya has broken Ethiopia’s back in the men’s contest. Secondly, best illustrated by the exploits of the mercurial Eliud Kipchoge, Kenya’s victories have become more emphatic. Thirdly, the contest among the women is finally more even.
Shade their rivals
Up to about three years ago, it seemed that the Ethiopian men were about to shade their Kenyan rivals. The Eritreans were lurking, and from time the Ugandans too were making threatening moves.
So how has Kenya come, again, to assert unrivalled supremacy in the men’s marathon? We went looking for new answers. Someone in the know told me the reason Kenya has prevailed for now has little to do with athletics, nor is it one God would approve of.
Consider, for example, that the only Kenyan long distance runner of recent years that has come to rival the status Gebrselassie enjoys in Ethiopia is Tergat.
Construction boom
At the start of the Addis Ababa construction boom, I was visiting Ethiopia and asked a friend, an irreverent publisher, which are the buildings owned by Gebrselassie that we keep reading about. He turned to me and said, “I think the easier question is which building in Addis is not owned by Gebrselassie.” Bekele too is now a famously wealthy fellow, with his own kind of stadium complex.
Ethiopia’s long distance runners enjoy a social status and wealth that Kenya’s don’t. And that in part has to do partly with the fact that they remain at the top for much longer. Many upcoming athletes therefore live in the shadows of the greats, sometimes afraid to upset the order on which the country’s national prestige has been built.
The most surprising explanation was from someone who said the biggest diseases of Kenyan athletics – corruption and incompetence – were also the biggest secret to its success.
Because athletics administration is incompetent and very corrupt, it is hard to have an Athletics Establishment that continuously makes selections and opens doors only to a small club of elite runners, even when they are past their prime. That is because corruption makes it possible for new talent to buy its way in, and the old to be cast out if it can no longer pay to stay in.
The result is that from its already large pool of talent, Kenya makes it possible for more of them to come through and have their day on the course.
But even without that, Kenya doesn’t have a cult system in athletics, and the bad boy behaviour of stars like 3,000 metres steeplechase champion Ezekiel Kemboi and the “stick it up yours” attitude of chaps like Eliud Kipchoge means an athletics aristocracy that cannot be challenged is not about to emerge.
