Sport
Sport - Jason Cowley remembers a great long-distance runner
Published 26 May 2003
If I close my eyes, I can still see him now, a lean figure leading the pack
Who today remembers Henry Rono? Before the recent emergence of Ethiopia's Haile Gebrselassie, many considered Rono to be the greatest long-distance runner in the history of the sport. I still think he is the greatest, because he ran from the front with such exuberance and freedom.
If I close my eyes, I can still see him now - a lean and gaudy figure, way in front of the pursuing pack. There is a dazed distance in his eyes as he drives himself on and on towards victory.
When I was a teenager, fascinated by the intensity of long-distance running, I read Alan Sillitoe's celebrated novel The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. It was the title that attracted me, because it captured so well something of the essence of distance running - of one man (or woman), alone, pushing himself on, relentlessly, in a kind of rapture of discipline and concentration.
Whenever I think of Sillitoe's book, I also think of Rono and of the glorious summer of 1978, when he broke four world records in a period of 81 days - the 10,000 metres, the 5,000 metres, the 3,000 metres steeplechase and the 3,000 metres.
The late 1970s were perhaps the most exciting period in athletics history, when the countries behind the Iron Curtain had an aura of mystery and power (the mystery turned out, in the end, to be performance-enhancing drugs). It was, for a start, the belle epoque of modern British athletics, when Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe were breaking world records for fun - each other's world records, it should not be forgotten - while at the same time contriving to avoid competing directly against one another. Until, that was, they were forced to meet at a major championship, such as the boycott-ravaged Moscow Olympics of 1980, when each won gold in what was considered to be the other's stronger event.
Rono was absent from the Moscow Olympics because of the American-influenced Kenyan boycott, just as he had missed the Montreal games four years earlier, because of the pan-African boycott. This meant that he never fully received the world's applause. Nor were there any Olympic gold medals to show for his talent.
A couple of summers ago, when I was last in Nairobi, I tried to find out what had become of Henry Rono. I'd heard bad stories - about his excessive drinking, and of how he was now cleaning lavatories somewhere in the city. After further investigation, I discovered he had not been seen in Kenya for many years. He was still in America, but had lost all his money (Rono never had an agent or lawyer to advise him during his years of dominance). For a time, he had been living in a hostel for the homeless in Washington, DC. Alcohol abuse and bad living had bloated his once athletic physique.
Today Rono, who was born in 1952, works part-time as a skycap (or baggage handler) at Albuquerque International Airport, New Mexico. He may have squandered the fortune he earned from track and field but at least, I understand, he has emerged from a period of lassitude and depression. He has even begun running again, a few miles here and there, at minor meetings or sponsored events.
As Britain prepares to bid to hold the 2012 Olympics in London, it is worth recalling the story of Henry Rono and how the dreams of the best athletes can so easily be destroyed by the vanity of politicians and the precariousness of the world order. Are the games worth holding in London?
The Millennium Dome was a disaster, as was the plan to build an athletics stadium at Picketts Lock in north London, and as has been the redevelopment of Wembley Stadium. Dare we risk another debacle? The answer is an emphatic yes; but only if the bid is sincere and pursued with the rigour, stamina, unity and sense of mission that are so often missing whenever we embark on grand public projects in our disunited kingdom.
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