African athletes and their training methods lift
U.S. distance hopes
Bob Baum (AP)
16 July 2000 – Sacramento, California - He remembers soldiers surrounding his village, looking for boys 12 and older to drag into the country's civil war. He remembers his older brothers scrambling to hide in the bushes to avoid being taken.
He first saw a car at age 10, and ran away from it.
Not the average biography for a U.S. distance runner.
The story of Meb Keflezighi, winner of the 10,000 metres at the U.S. Olympic Trials, is just part of the Africanization of the U.S. distance running team. Another North African-born runner, Abdi Abdirahman, finished third to make the U.S. team just six months after gaining U.S. citizenship.
The African influence doesn't stop there. Bob Kennedy, the American record holder at 3000 and 5000 metres, and steeplechaser Pascal Dobert train with the powerful Kenyan runners year-round.
They run at camps in Australia in the winter, Palo Alto, California, in the spring and near London in the summer.
"What it did for me is two things,'' Kennedy said. "One, it raised the bar as far as what my expectations should be in training, and later in racing, just because they train so hard.
"But what it also did, which I think is almost more important, is it demystified the Kenyan or the African grip on distance running.''
Kennedy said theories that Africans have a genetic advantage when it comes to running long distances may be part of the reason for their success. But the real reason, he said, is that the Africans simply work hard.
"By training with them, I began to realise that,'' he said.
"They are human beings just like we are and the reason they're good is their desire, their work ethic and their race ethic. And I hopefully have taken some of that for my own.''
Keflezighi believes it is only a coincidence that two of the top three finishers in the 10,000 Friday night were from North Africa.
Neither ran, at least competitively, in Africa. Keflezighi and his family left Eritrea when he was 12 because of the civil war.
Abdirahman and his family fled Somalia when he was 10 because of the approaching civil war, government corruption and rampant crime.
Keflezighi spent a year in Italy, then moved to San Diego, where he began running in junior high and went on to UCLA, where he won the NCAA 5,000 and 10,000 titles in 1997. He became a U.S. citizen in 1998.
Abdirahman got a much later start. He didn't begin running until 1997, when someone suggested that he try out for the sport at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona, where he lives.
Running in blue jeans and boots, he finished second in a 4-mile (6-kilometre) run.
"After that, the coach gave me shorts and running shoes and said ‘I have a spot for you on the team,’" Abdirahman said.
"Things have gone pretty well since then.''
The next year, Abdirahman was running for Arizona and finished second in the 5,000 at the NCAA's.
Both Keflezighi and Abdirahman believe the African domination of the sport is based on desire and hard work, not on anything genetic. Many of the top competitors have been running since they were children, not competitively, but across the vast countryside where there is no other form of transportation.
Distance running also is a path to success for Africans, they said.
"They don't have distractions like Nintendo,'' Keflezighi said.
"They have discipline. It's just work ethic. You've got to be balanced in life. It's a peace of mind. Once you do that, if you work hard, it should be no problem.''
If he wins a medal in Sydney, Keflezighi wants to carry both the U.S. flag and the flag of Eritrea, as he did following his 10,000 metres victory in Sacramento.
"It would be a dream come true,'' he said. "That's where I was born. It's part of me. You can't change that.''
