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Samuel Wanjiru, who won the 2008 Olympic marathon, was not the first famous Kenyan athlete to drink and run. TNY—2012_05_21—PAGE 48—133SC.—livE ArT r22198 LETTER fROM KENYA fiNisH LiNE A Kenyan running champion’s tragic weakness. BY XAN RicE t 7:30 A.M. on the final day of the 2:06:32, nearly three minutes faster than ing to pull away from Wanjiru, Kebede 2008 Summer Olympics, in Bei- the Olympic record set in Los Angeles, was spent. With five hundred and fifty jing,A the temperature was 70 degrees in 1984, by Portugal’s Carlos Lopes, who yards to go, Wanjiru launched a devas- Fahrenheit and climbing fast. The hu- was then thirty-seven years old. Wanjiru tating sprint on a small rise. Federico midity was seventy-two per cent. For the was the youngest marathon gold medal- Rosa, a burly Italian who was Wanjiru’s ninety-five athletes lined up in Tianan- ist in seventy-six years. manager, told me, “Sammy won with his men Square for the men’s marathon, the The first half of his race had been mind and his balls.” city’s notorious pollution posed an added significantly faster than the second half, In defeating Kebede, Wanjiru re- challenge. Haile Gebrselassie, the Ethi- and this upended the prevailing view that tained the title in the World Marathon opian who held the world record of a marathoner should run at an even pace Majors, a two-year series that ranks per- 2:04:26, had skipped the event, citing the for most of the route, the second half of formances in the top five city races. With threat to his health. Few experts believed the race slightly swifter than the first— his prize money, appearance fees, and a that the winner would finish within six the “negative split.” On the Runner’s Nike sponsorship deal, he was earning minutes of Gebrselassie’s mark; besides World Web site, Amby Burfoot, the more than a million dollars a year. the weather, the absence of pacesetters, 1968 Boston Marathon winner, de- Though he was just twenty-three, his who are not permitted in Olympic mar- scribed Wanjiru’s performance as “the place among the finest marathoners in athons, would be a drag on the tempo. craziest running I’ve ever seen.” He also history was assured. He had run only From the start, a twenty-one-year-old called it the greatest marathon ever. seven marathons, all of them major com- Kenyan named Samuel Wanjiru, run- Two years later, Wanjiru ran an even petitions, and won five, always with fast ning only his third 26.2-miler, sprinted more astounding race. When he lined up times. He never ran another one. Seven to the front, as if it were a fifteen- at the Chicago Marathon, in October, months after his Chicago victory, Wan- hundred-metre race. Only five feet four, 2010, he was only “seventy per cent” fit, jiru fell from the balcony of his home in Wanjiru ran with his head tilted to the he later admitted, and had been written Kenya, and died at the hospital shortly side and his back upright. His hands off by the press. “Everyone had doubts afterward. The police said that it was hung low, palms open, paddling the air about Sammy,” Sean Hartnett, a corre- suicide. as he moved. Kenyan athletes are re- spondent for Track & Field News, told nowned for their long, birdlike legs and me. “Reports from Kenya said he was liv- ike most rural Kenyans, Wanjiru graceful strides, but he had powerful ing off his fame, not his fitness, with sto- grew up poor. His parents separated quadriceps that drove his feet at a furious ries of drinking and fights.” Once again, whenL he was four, leaving his mother, pace. The first five kilometres took him Wanjiru started fast, and for a while even Hannah, to raise him and his younger only 14:52—a minute faster than the moved ahead of the pacesetters, in an at- brother, Simon. They lived with Han- winning time in the women’s five- tempt to hurry them up. At twenty-three nah’s parents in Ol Kalou, a small town thousand-metre race, two days earlier. miles, he and the Ethiopian Tsegaye in the highlands of central Kenya. Han- The next five-kilometre split was nine- Kebede were alone at the front, engaged nah, who is fifty, told me, “I was cultivat- teen seconds quicker. By then, the field in the sort of physical and mental duel ing on my father’s shamba”—Swahili for had been blown apart, with just eight rarely seen in long-distance running. farm—“and doing manual work. It was athletes in the lead group. That fell to Kebede surged, opening a small gap, but just me supporting my family. There was five at the halfway mark, which they Wanjiru reeled him in, briefly taking the no money.” reached in 1:02:34—five seconds off the lead before Kebede surged once more. When Wanjiru was old enough to world-record pace. Wanjiru was still Again and again, Wanjiru closed in, as if ride a bicycle, he began working as a there. attached to his rival by elastic, but with bread delivery boy to help his mother In bright sunshine, the temperature the morning sun behind them Kebede financially. Despite often being excluded rose to 84 degrees. Though the pace could react to the sight of his competi- from class, because of unpaid fees, he dropped slightly, Wanjiru kept surging, tor’s shadow, prompting Wanjiru to try finished primary school. Secondary edu- iO and one by one his competitors dropped to hide by veering wide or sticking di- cation, however, was too expensive. He ECCH v away. With just over three miles to go, he rectly behind him. probably would have become a mason or DO kicked for home. On reaching the Olym- “This is like the Frazier-Ali,” a televi- a farm laborer, he later said, if not for r pic stadium, he sped up once more before sion announcer said. athletics. riCCA breaking the tape. His winning time was Having exerted so much energy try- He first showed running talent at the THE NEW YORKER, M AY 21, 2012 49 TNY—2012_05_21—PAGE 49—133SC. age of ten, at school track meets, and soon konjou—endurance and willpower— August, 2005, he ran 26:41 for the ten scored victories in provincial cross-coun- quickly yielded success. Five years after thousand metres in Brussels, smashing try races. When his education was put on Kobayashi sent the eighteen-year-old the world junior record; he was soon hold, he started running full time, joining Doug las Wakiihuri to Japan, Wakiihuri signed by Rosa, the Italian manager, who a training camp in nearby Nyahururu, won silver in the marathon at the 1988 represented many Kenyan athletes. Two which, at nearly eight thousand feet, is Olympics, in Seoul—the first time that a weeks later, Wanjiru broke the half-mar- the country’s highest town, and has served Kenyan marathoner had won an Olympic athon world record. His performances, as a base for top athletes ever since Kenya medal. Another Kobayashi recruit, Erick his jovial demeanor, and his command of emerged as a distance-running super- Wainaina, took bronze in Atlanta, in Japanese made him a star in Japan. power, more than forty years ago. 1996, and silver in Sydney, four years later. In the evenings, Wanjiru started hav- Isaac Macharia, today a world-class Kobayashi told me that, in 2001, after ing a few beers. Social drinking is routine marathoner, lived at the camp as a observing a barefoot Wanjiru compete among élite athletes in Japan, and Brett twenty-year-old in 2000, when Wanjiru and “liking his running style,” he got him Larner, a Tokyo-based Canadian who arrived there. Conditions were crude, a scholarship at Sendai Ikuei Gakuen publishes the Japan Running News blog, Macharia told me. Few of the runners High School, on Japan’s northeast coast. told me, “While Wanjiru was in Japan, had proper shoes or a training kit; a tank Wanjiru, then fifteen, did not know nobody had a sense that he was drinking top was a prized item. They slept two to where Japan was. He had never travelled too much.” a bed. After the second tough training by plane. English was his third language, That year, during a brief trip home to session of the day, the young men went after Kikuyu and Swahili, and he spoke it Kenya, Wanjiru married Terezah Njeri, off and collected wild vegetables to eat poorly. Still, his mother, with whom he a local girl whom he had dated in high with ugali, a maize-flour porridge that is was very close, considered training in school. Wanjiru was eighteen, his bride Kenya’s staple. The leftovers were the Japan a huge opportunity, and so he seventeen. Soon afterward, he returned next day’s breakfast. Wanjiru, then thir- flew to Tokyo in 2002, and took the bul- to Japan, alone, for training. teen, was young to be in a camp, but he let train to Sendai. He was one of two In 2007, Wanjiru lowered his half- was emotionally mature. “Most of us Kenyans at the school. He didn’t go home marathon world record twice, the second from humble backgrounds—by the time for the holidays for nearly a year. The time to 58:33. He told Rosa that he be- you are ten or eleven you are grown up,” winter was severe, as was the discipline.

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