Long distance love affair

For almost 15 years now, Kenyan distance runners have been closing the door on the rest of the world. There have been many explanations, from the outside looking in, although rarely do they provide all the answers. Slowly, Brother Colm O'Connell can distil them all.

Knowledge evolved from two decades of coaching in Kenya has made Brother Colm one of the most curious figures in world athletics. It's common for the intrigued to seek him out at St Patrick's High School, his missionary base on the verge of Africa's great Rift Valley. Word of an appearance at home rarely goes unnoticed, and again the attention comes from those looking for answers.

Most of the time, Brother Colm arrives in Ireland unexpected or unplanned. April is holiday month in Kenya and the offer of a trip home landed at an ideal time. He had been thinking for a while about a visit to his mother in Caherduggan in Cork, who turned 80 last Sunday.

"I'm fortunate that I'm able to make it home one way or another every couple of years," he says, "although it's never really long enough to get a good run of the country. There's a lot of people to see and you never get around to doing everything you want."

For a week now he's been travelling between his native Cork, Dublin and the Patrician college in Newbridge which he left as a missionary teacher in 1976. With a name that has become synonymous with the breeding of success and domination that Kenya now holds in distance running, the conversation inevitably turns to the source.

Success as a coach, however, was never a venture that Brother Colm set out to attain. When he arrived to teach at St Patrick's, his athletics' knowledge and interest was less than basic. The desire to integrate with his pupils was the only motivation, and within a few days he found himself running around with a stopwatch. Peter Foster, a brother of British Olympian Brendan, was on overseas work at the school and figured this Irish guy must know something about the sport.

Over the years, the list of Olympic and world champions who have passed through Brother Colm's coaching hands at St Patrick's has continued to grow. His more cherished graduates include Peter Rono, Olympic 1,500 metres champion in 1988, and Matthew Birir, steeplechase champion in 1992. In coaching terms, he is one of the most successful of all time. Others would surely have had rules, but Brother Colm has none.

"From the beginning I've learnt most of my athletics from my athletes. I had no coaching background of any sort and depended mostly on watching them, seeing how they reacted to the training. To this day, I believe there is no one principle or method that you can apply to all athletes. Each one has to be taken separately and the training adjusted to the individual. That means the athlete and coach must always see eye to eye, and it's that close relationship that remains the basis of all my coaching.

"It took a few years before I realised the depth of talent here, and the potential they had to reach the top of international athletics. It's been a slow enough process and it was only after the 1984 Olympics that the success of Kenyan athletes started to develop from a home base. "The school structure, that of the army and elsewhere began to work with the athletic potential and that has brought about the major growth in terms of participation and opportunity. There are problems still, and to be honest the country has yet to make the most of this huge base of athletes."

Not exactly the most encouraging words from a European point of view. On the track, road and cross country, the task of beating the Kenyans has become increasingly difficult, and with few exceptions is being lost. A glance at the distance results from any major championships in the last decade is proof of that, but Brother Colm believes the way to catch up will not come simply by adopting Kenyan training methods.

"Athletics has always been an individual sport, and it's very much based on the focus of the individual. I think many Europeans can match the best from Africa by concentrating on the strengths that they have. The Spanish are doing it quite successfully and of course you see it as well with Catherina McKiernan. It's more about making the commitments to a full-time lifestyle that is not always glamorous or high-profile. Still, I know it's not always easy for athletes in Ireland to go into that full-time set-up and make the necessary sacrifices.

"In Kenya, that is something the people can take to more easily. They have been brought up the hard way. They have a strong endurance for pain and difficulty, their lifestyle is very tough, which they have accepted. They can transfer this to the training and the racing, to reach the wall of pain and to keep going. It's the same as life, there's no point lying down, no point in throwing yourself off the track."

The comparisons between running in Kenya and the western world will always be contrasting. In a country where poverty is still the norm and a decent living comes more from imagination than education, the incentive for athletes to succeed is already superior. Around St Patrick's and the village of Iten, 8,000 feet above sea level, the land is fertile and the standards of living as good as anywhere in Kenya, but the money from athletics far out-classes other routes.

One of the few problems has been keeping the top runners in the sport, with a large number spending a few years on the circuit and then quickly retiring with their earnings. For example, both Richard Chelimo and William Sigei broke the world 10,000 metres record in the last decade and disappeared soon afterwards. That is being addressed now with numerous training camps being established to nurture the new talent through the experience of the old.

Brother Colm's own role in the athletic community has been changing through the years and after 17 years of teaching at St Patrick's (seven as headmaster), he now concentrates strictly on the coaching side, along with three other schools in the area. His academic skills, meanwhile, have shifted to a nearby teacher-training college. In addition, the International Olympic Committee have set up a training camp at Eldoret, a half-hour drive from Iten, and not surprisingly, Brother Colm's services were requested. In total he has about 100 top junior athletes under his direction and eight world class seniors at the camp beside his home. With a coaching reputation that is now world-wide, the offers and attractions to bring his skills overseas have always come searching.

"There has been interest from American universities and elsewhere, but I don't think it would be possible for me to have the same sort of success in other countries. The lifestyle here has suited my needs, giving the time and space to work with the athletes. And the level of appreciation that the Kenyan people have for your efforts will always impress me most.

"You also have a number of athletes who are willing to put the knowledge they have gained back into the sport, and that's very important. Moses Kiptanui, for example, has his own training camp here and he will never go out running without a huge group of youngsters behind him. "Athletics has changed so much in the last few years, and requires so much time and effort, but that is something we are willing to do here. It's a community venture where everybody is helping each other, and bringing each other on through shared encouragement and knowledge. That certainly helps the individual to focus."

An appreciation of the athletes' experience is not always the reward of a long-term coaching relationship. That's never a worry in Brother Colm's case and he'll talk favourably of all his graduates with equal enthusiasm. Even Wilson Kipketer, his one time favourite who now holds the world 800 metres record for Denmark, stays in close contact with the school and his roots.

Whether his craft could ever have developed in Ireland is hard to know. Even the challenge of putting his ideas into a book would, he believes, be impossible. "I have been lucky to find my niche in this sport and fortunate that I took so well to the athletic community in Kenya. It would be very hard now to imagine doing something similar in Ireland because the country has changed so much, and faster than anything we've seen before. Kenya has changed very little. Out here it's more like the way of life that I remember at home and I know I'd have problems settling back home now."

There is always an excited tone when he mentions any of his runners, related to the pride in their achievements as much as his role in guiding them. Kenya has found the godfather of their sport and as the athletic success continues to spread, there's no sign of him slowing down. You could say he converted a nation.