Friendship means more than
running for Kenyan duo
Hannah Cowdy (Reuters)
12 April 2000 – London - For London marathon favourites Joyce Chepchumba and Tegla Loroupe friendship is more important than crossing the line.
"Running cannot put our relationship under strain. Sport is part of life. It's not everything in life," the world marathon leader Loroupe said on Wednesday.
The way the two women giggle as they order the same pasta dish and regret not having time to go shopping together it would be easy to forget they are less than four days away from racing each other in the London marathon for the first time.
A decade after the two met while working at the post office in their home country of Kenya, the tiny Loroupe may have the upper hand on paper but she is a newcomer to the race which Chepchumba won last year.
"I think she can look for herself," Chepchumba said when asked if she had told Loroupe what to expect of the course.
"I keep on telling her this is a nice race. This time she is to test it," said the 29-year-old Chepchumba who won last year's marathon in 2.23.22 - then a women's world best.
The camaraderie gained from seven years training together in Germany away from their families’ shines through.
WOMEN ONLY
"We are doing the same (training) programme apart from the races. If she is going to win, it will be good for me because she is my partner," Loroupe said.
But she admitted the hunger for success was still there, adding: "Sometimes we don't race each other when we both want a victory."
This Sunday's women's elite race provides Loroupe, 26, with an opportunity to turn her back on the controversy surrounding her two world record marathon attempts where she had male pacemakers.
"I'm going to try my best. I think I have to prove on Sunday that I'm also a woman...to prove I can run with women," she said.
Both agree the race will not be easy and acknowledge they face stiff competition, particularly from Romania's Lidia Simon, winner of Japan's prestigious Osaka marathon for the past two years.
"We are not the only people who are going to run on Sunday. There are also others who are fast," Loroupe said.
OLYMPIC PLACES
Chepchumba agreed that they would be unlikely to cross the finishing line holding hands in a repeat performance of the 1981 race between American Dick Beardsley and Norway's Inge Simonsen.
"But it would be nice if we were all sprinting at the end to see who is the best sprinter," she chuckled.
Both said it would be good to know if they had made the cut for Kenya's Olympic team when the head of the country's athletic federation lands in London on Friday.
But Loroupe knows all too well that Kenya is a breeding ground for world-class athletes and she has something of her own to prove.
On a 20-km walk during a return trip to Kenya last year, Loroupe's mother, who is in her 60s, accused her daughter of being lazy.
"I was walking slower than her and I was only carrying 15 kg," said the 40-kg, 1.53-metre athlete.
"From the age of six I walked 50 kms each week and sometimes carried more than my body weight."
