Kenya
I'd met both Mary Keitany and Emmanuel Mutai in the run-up. How
strange to watch them stride through my home city on TV
Adharanand Finn
Wednesday April 20 2011
guardian.co.uk
I'm sitting in the Grand Pri restaurant in Eldoret waiting for the
start of the London marathon. The owner, former half-marathon world-
record holder and world 10,000m champion Moses Tanui [http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Tanui" title="Moses Tanui], has promised a
London Marathon [http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/london-marathon"
title="London Marathon] party, and the whole place is kitted out with
red balloons and posters. Moses and his friends are all wearing red
Virgin London Marathon jackets, smiling and handing out whistles.
Downstairs in the underground bar area, hundreds of people are sitting
in front of big screens awaiting the start. The only problem: there's
no power. The TVs are all blank. And the race is about to begin.
Moses seems unperturbed. He has a generator, he says. Things will be
up and running in a minute. But when the power eventually comes on,
about 45 minutes later, for some reason the only thing any of the TVs
can tune in to is a programme called Gospel Sunday.
We sit and wait. Moses has invited me to watch the race in his
personal office, which contains the biggest TV I've ever seen. Also
watching the race here are a host of other former running stars.
Nobody else seems perturbed that we are missing the race. They sit
chatting calmly as the minutes tick by. After a while, I decide to see
what the atmosphere is like downstairs in the packed bar. On the way
down I pass Moses on the stairs.
"Sorry," he says as he passes, talking urgently on his phone. He looks
slightly traumatised. I make my way under some exposed pipes, passed
the blackened kitchens, and into the bar. It's completely empty. The
last man is just leaving.
"The Klique hotel [http://www.kliquehotel.com/" title="Klique hotel],"
he tells me. "It has screens."
So I leave Moses fretting with a team of engineers and head to the
Klique hotel around the corner. It is rammed to the rafters with
people cheering and blowing whistles.
By the time I arrive, the Kenyan athlete Mary Keitany [http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Jepkosgei_Keitany" title="Mary Keitany] has
a commanding lead in the women's race. Last month, I visited her and
her husband at their house just outside Iten [http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Iten" title="Iten].
It's a small, simple place, with a few cows in a field out the back
for milk. We sat and drank orange squash in her cramped living room
and watched WWF wrestling. Whenever I asked her a question about
running she laughed nervously and looked at her husband. And now here
she is, charging through the streets of London, the whole world
watching as she runs the fourth-fastest marathon ever to win.
By the time she has finished, the men's race is hotting up. The lead
pack includes Emmanuel Mutai [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Emmanuel_Kipchirchir_Mutai" title="Emmanuel Mutai]. I also spent a few
days with him at his training camp [http://www.guardian.co.uk/
lifeandstyle/2011/apr/05/running-with-the-kenyans" title="spent a few
days with him at his training camp] just a few weeks ago, chatting
with him as he scrubbed his running shoes in a bucket of cold water.
I watched him on a long 38km training run demolish the rest of his
camp ? including a number of other top runners such as Bernard Kipyego
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Kipyego" title="Bernard
Kipyego], who came second in the Paris marathon just last week. I said
to his coach, Patrick Sang, that no one in the media was talking about
Emmanuel as a potential London marathon winner even though he came
second last year. "That's because people who write for newspapers
don't know what they're talking about," he replied with a big grin.
A big cheer goes up in the Klique hotel as Emmanuel surges to the
front of the field at around 30km and starts leaving the others
behind, and I find myself cheering and blowing my whistle like
everyone else. It's strange watching him running on television through
the streets of my home city, with the same fluid form and easy air
he'd had on the dusty tracks of Kaptagat just weeks before.
In the end, both winners [http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/apr/17/
mary-keitany-emmanuel-mutai-london" title="both winners] are people
I've spoken to recently. I feel a warm glow of connection as I tumble
out of the bar with everyone else. In the street outside I bump into a
few of Emmanuel's training partners, who smile and shake my hand.
"Emmanuel ran well," they say calmly, almost expectantly. He has just
become the fourth-fastest marathon runner ever. And won the London
marathon. But to them, it's just another day's work.
- The book Running with the Kenyans by Adharanand Finn will be
published in 2012.
guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2011
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