Kenyan middle and long distance running Print, Vintage Atletica Poster, Kenya Retro Wall Art, Sports Gift, Black and White Sports Print

SCUOLA KENIANA DEL MEZZOFONDO — a LostTeams editorial print telling the existing story of Scuola keniana del mezzofondo, 1968-1988.

Mexico City sits at about two thousand two hundred and forty metres. In 1968 that was treated as a medical emergency for the Olympic distance events. Teams arrived weeks early. Physiologists warned that the endurance races would be slow and dangerous.

For a group of Kenyan runners it was roughly the altitude of home.

Kip Keino ran the 10000 metres, the 5000 metres and the 1500 metres at those Games. In the 10000 he collapsed with stomach pain and was carried off on a stretcher, then got up and finished anyway, and was disqualified for leaving the track.

He took silver in the 5000.

On the day of the 1500 final he was caught in traffic on the way to the stadium and ran the last mile or so to get there. The story is often told as colour; it is documented.

Jim Ryun of the United States was the world record holder and the overwhelming favourite. Keino had his teammate Ben Jipcho take the first laps at a suicidal pace to break the field. Then he went.

He won by about twenty metres, the largest margin in Olympic 1500 metres history, in 3:34.9.

What happened next is the part that matters. It was not one athlete. It became a system: schools, camps, and a running culture concentrated in the Rift Valley highlands around Eldoret and Iten, where children ran to school at altitude as a matter of routine and the fastest of them found a path that led somewhere.

The geography is remarkably narrow. Most of the elite runners come from a small area of highland around Eldoret and Iten, and a large proportion from a single ethnic group, the Kalenjin, who make up a few per cent of Kenya's population and a very large share of its world-class distance runners.

Researchers have spent fifty years arguing about why: altitude, body proportions, childhood activity levels, economic incentive, training culture. The honest summary is that no single factor explains it and the combination has never been reproduced elsewhere.

Kenya has since won more Olympic and world medals in middle and long distance running than any other nation.

It began with a man winning at home, even though the race was in Mexico.

Hang it. One day someone will ask you what it is, and you will know where to begin.