London favorites Wanjiru, Kebede lead youth movement

Thu Apr 23, 2009 By David Powell Universal Sports - London – In marathoning, as the top women get older, the best men grow younger. Consider the evidence of the Flora London Marathon, the race with the biggest buying power of the world’s established commercial marathons.

The top eight names in the women’s elite filed for Sunday have an average age of 36, not one younger than 30. One, Russia’s Lyudmila Petrova, made the 2008 ING New York City Marathon podium at 40. Glance at the men’s field and what do we see? A pair of 22-year-olds counted among the favorites.

While defending champion Irina Mikitenko from Germany (36), Olympic champion Constantina Dita from Romania (39), world champion Catherine Ndereba from Kenya (37) and star of track, road and country Gete Wami from Ethiopia (34) headline the women’s field in London, the men’s race has an altogether different look.
Sammy Wanjiru and Tsegaye Kebede, the 22-year-olds of reference, think a trend has begun.

“From now the marathon is for young people,” Kenya’s Wanjiru said Wednesday at the first of three daily press calls for the 29th London Marathon.

“It is definitely becoming a young man’s race,” Ethiopia’s Kebede opined.

Who are they to say? Only the gold and bronze medallists from the Olympic men’s marathon in Beijing last August, that’s who.

“Many years ago people said that if you are young you cannot run the marathon,” Wanjiru, the Olympic champion, added. “But it depends on the training. When young people do the right training they can run very fast. Young people have a lot of power, a lot of courage. If you have a strong heart you can run fast.”

Olympic bronze medallist Kebede said that he was “surprised it hasn’t happened before”, adding, “even the Kenyans, a lot of them are quite young and that is why they are producing the times. Youth plays a big role.”

On April 5 Kenya’s 21-year-old Vincent Kipruto set a course record 2:05.47 in the Paris Marathon. While success at a young age is not new – Korea’s Hwang Young-Cho (1992) and Ethiopia’s Gezahegne Abera (2000) were Olympic champions at 22 and Kenya’s Cosmas Ndeti secured the first of his three 1990s Boston victories at 21 – signs are that they may be no longer rare.

“It used to be that you did your track season then you started the marathon at 30 to 35, now everyone moves straight to the marathon and so it is not a race for old people,” he said Wednesday.

“They are going straight to the marathon. Otherwise, if you are from Africa, you don’t get to compete any more. There is no market. If you are a 13:15 5000m track runner you cannot get a place in any meeting in the world if you are from Kenya. If you run 12:59 in a Golden League meeting you may go home with $500.”

In the last 50 years, Abebe Bikila, Mamo Wolde, Waldemar Cierpinski, Carlos Lopes and Stefano Baldini have all won Olympic marathon titles past their thirtieth birthday and. Last September, Haile Gebrselassie set a world record 2:03.59 at age 35.

But Tim Hutchings, a Eurosport TV commentator, former double world cross-country medallist, and former London elite field coordinator, echoes Rosa’s point.

“The perception that you start your career as a middle or long distance runner on the track, fulfil your potential at 5000/10,000m then move into road and marathon racing is being thrown out of the window by the Africans,” Hutchings said. “The payback for being a great track runner is so minute compared with being a great marathon runner, or even a moderate marathon runner.

“Athletes running 12.59 for 5000m, which is incredibly fast, could put in the same amount of commitment and be welcomed into dozens of big marathons around the world, finish in the top 10, and earn a reasonably good payday. For breaking 2:10, maybe running 2:11, they will get a few thousand bucks.”

“A lot of east African kids are moving into road races straight away and they don’t see it as a prerequisite to have been a great track runner. They are rewriting the rulebook.”

Or tracing history back to its roots. Bikila, the first black African to win an Olympic athletics gold medal, had no known track background prior to the first of his two Olympic marathon victories in 1960.

Gebrselassie’s 2:03.59 will not last long, perhaps not even beyond Sunday, says Wanjiru. “My target is to break the world record and be No.1, maybe on Sunday,” he said. “If the pace is good (the rabbits have been hired to reach the half in 61.50) I will try to break the world record.”

As world record holder for the half marathon (58.33) whose 2:06.32 in Beijing in adverse conditions is, according to some experts, the best marathon ever run, Wanjiru is qualified to claim that the record could soon be his. Runner-up to Kenya’s Martin Lel in London last year, Wanjiru set his personal best of 2:05.24 on the London course.

Wanjiru passed off his recent modest racing form – a slower winning time than he recorded last year in the Granollers Half Marathon, in Spain, and seventh place in the Lisbon Half Marathon – as irrelevant. “I think my body is very good and I can go faster than last year,” he said. “I like a hot race. If the weather here is fine, maybe I can run very fast.”

Different paths to success

The journeys taken by Wanjiru and Kebede to the Olympic podium, and now to London, come in marked contrast. Although both were born into poverty, Wanjiru left home at 15 to go to Japan on an education scholarship. Kebede toiled gathering wood for sale in a local market to help feed his family and was 18 before he began training.

Brought up in the small town of Nyahururu by his single mother, Wanjiru was talent-spotted by a Japanese promoter at a high altitude training camp in Kenya. He spent three years competing for Sendai Ikuei Gakuen High School and, after graduating, he joined the Toyota Kyushu corporate team.

It was the springboard to Wanjiru setting a 10,000m world junior record (26:41.75) in 2005 at age 18 and 15 days later he set his first of two half marathon world records (59:16) in Rotterdam, beating the mark held by esteemed countryman Paul Tergat. By 2007 he was ready for his marathon debut, setting a course record 2:06.39 in Fukuoka.

Wanjiru explained today that he now spends half his time in Japan and half in Kenya. “I’m in Nyahururu from January to May,” he said. “In Japan now it is winter. After winter I go back to Japan, maybe in June.” In Japan he is based in Fukuoka.

Mindful of his upbringing, Wanjiru sends money back home. He received a $25,000 bonus for his 58:33 half marathon world record in The Hague, The Netherlands, in 2007. He donated the money to a children’s home in Nyahururu, where his mother worked.

When Kebede thinks back to his life as the fifth-born of 13 children, and the hardship the family suffered, he recalls a time in which he earned less than the equivalent of $2 a day. “I gave up full-time education and adopted a part-time system where I would study in the evenings and help my mother and father collect wood during the daytime,” Kebede reflected today.

“Sometimes, when I think back on how I used to survive with my family, it brings a tear to my eye. I thank God every day that I have the opportunity to help my family out of poverty. It is almost like a dream that I used to live like that.

“Now, from the marathon, I have sent money home for my parents, brothers and sisters, to build a house and I have also bought them cattle so they can be self sufficient. That is my aim – for them to be able to provide for themselves.”

Kebede began running only after seeing friends in his neighborhood run and in the face of anger from his father, who thought he was wasting his time. Having caught the eye of Geteneh Tessema, Wami’s husband, he progressed towards his first marathon in 2007. It almost resulted in tragic consequences.

One week before the Addis Ababa Marathon, the squad was on the way to training in Entoto, on the capital’s outskirts, when their bus crashed. ”It was a serious crash,” Kebede said. “The brakes failed and it toppled over a small cliff. It was a miracle everybody survived because some were badly hurt. I hurt only my knee and was able to run the marathon.”

Of the lure of the marathon in Ethiopia, Kebede said: “It is a combination of the fact that the marathon has such a big resounding name in Ethiopia and, when people hear that you are a marathon runner, it strikes a chord straight away.

“There is also a financial reason – the children in Ethiopia feel they are likely to earn significantly more from marathons than they are from running track so they are getting into marathons a lot younger with a more focused way of training.”

Still, the veterans will have their say. In the media room along with Wanjiru and Kebede was Jaouad Gharib who, since turning 30 five years ago, has won the world title twice, won silver at the Beijing Olympics, and has achieved four podium finishes in World Marathon Majors races. Is he too old at 37 next month?
“In training I am performing better now than when I was 30,” Gharib said. “I feel less than 22.”

Sometimes it's not how old you are but how young you feel that counts.