Interview: Brother Colm O'Connell

by Scott Douglas

Brother Colm O'Connell, 55, is the athletics coach and a retired headmaster at St. Patrick's High School in Iten, Kenya. Those titles, however, hardly hint at the seminal role he has played in Kenyan running. Since O'Connell began coaching in the late 1970s at St. Patrick's (a boys' boarding school), he has seen more than 100 of his athletes become world-class. A short list of St. Patrick's graduates includes 1988 Olympic 1,500m champion Peter Rono, 800m world record holder Wilson Kipketer, former world steeplechase record holder Wilson Boit Kipketer and three-time Boston Marathon champion Ibrahim Hussein.

O'Connell has also played a vital role in identifying and nurturing young female talent. In 1989, he held the first junior training camp for Kenyan girls. Eight girls attended that first camp, including Lydia Cheromei, the second-fastest 15K runner in history, and Susan Chepkemei, second at November's ING New York City Marathon. The three-week camps are held twice a year, in April and December, when schools are on break. The most recent camp, in December, hosted 31 boys and 28 girls; 10 of those attendees have represented Kenya in international competition.

In the past couple of years, O'Connell has become the coach of three professional runners: Isaac Songok, Augustine Choge, and Rebby Koech. Last year, Songok set a 1,500m PR of 3:30, won the Kenyan Olympic Trials and made the Olympic final. Choge won his the world junior title at 5,000m on the track, and set PRs of 7:36 for 3,000m and 12:57 for 5,000m. Koech — whose brother William was 7th in the 1992 Olympic 10,000m — had a successful road racing season in Europe, including a 1:13 half marathon. The three share half of a small house that sits 15 feet behind O'Connell's.

On the morning we did this interview, the most recent junior camp had just ended so that the runners could be home in time for Christmas.

MensRacing.com: You came here in 1976 as a geography teacher with no experience in athletics, right?
Colm O'Connell: Yes, just a very passive interest in athletics, like many people would have when they follow sports in general.

MR: How did it happen, then, that you got involved initially with athletics?
CO: I came during the track season, in July of '76. The school was preparing for track competitions, and the two main people at the time in the track program were Peter Foster, a brother of Brendan, the well-known British athlete, and a guy called Norman Thomson, who was a Peace Corps volunteer from Wisconsin. I tagged along for some of the competitions, and then Peter Foster, who knew that his contract with the school had one year remaining, had the idea that he would like someone to continue with the program. The school did have the beginnings of an athletics tradition when I came; I wasn't the one really introducing the whole program.

MR: Like Mike Boit [800m silver medalist in the 1972 Olympics].
CO: Correct, Mike had gone before me. So I was kind of at a loose end, with no particular sport to get involved in. This being a boarding school for boys, of course sports was an integral part of the activities of the school, and Pete asked me during that year, 'Would you like to get involved with athletics?' And of course I naturally reacted to say, 'I don't know anything about the sport.' 'Well,' he said, 'you'll learn, and because you're dealing mainly with school kids, you don't have to have a very in-depth knowledge of the sport to help out with the program.' So I gradually took a greater interest in the sport, and one year later, when Pete Foster left, he more or less handed over the program to me.

MR: What were your sources of information? How did you go about learning how to coach?
CO: During that year of initiation into the coaching program, I learned a lot from the athletes and from the coaches themselves and from going to competitions. It wasn't until later that I began to read up more about the sport, learn about coaching, and then eventually took some coaching courses under the German government.

MR: What did you read?
CO: Books on coaching, techniques, IAAF literature, and anything I could find that would help me. But most of my experience was coming from my being with the athletes and being with the coaches and watching them train.

MR: Was it that you learned what they did and balanced that with what you were reading?
CO: What I was reading wasn't very much. What I was reading was more to support what I was actually doing and out of general interest and knowing that, in the near future, I would be the coach of the team.

MR: Are there things that are significantly different that you do in your coaching now compared to then?
CO: Well, yes, the scene has changed very much, because at that time, our main concentration was on school kids in St. Patrick's. Now it's a much wider program. At that time, coaching was much simpler. The athletes that we were handling, we did not see them representing the country — there were no junior competitions at the time. Sport at that time was becoming prestigious in certain schools like St. Patrick's, like it might be now in certain U.S. colleges that are known for their sports. But now, in a sense, the sport is for representation of the country, the individual concerns. For many athletes at that time, they never went beyond doing it in school. There weren't so many opportunities, except for those who went to the US on track scholarships, or a few who might be absorbed into the forces, particularly the armed forces, to continue with their career. But it didn't have the same options; therefore, it was done at a much more low-key level.

We are much more... I won't say professional, but at least more advanced in our approach. We know more about the sport, we know that a lot more athletes can take it up as a career, we know that many of them use it as a stepping stone to education and to track scholarships, so the opportunities are vast compared to what it was at that time. At that time, it was done almost purely for fun, and for the prestige and reputation of the school.

MR: What I mean is, are there things in terms of how you train people that you do now that you didn't use to do?
CO: Well, of course, yes. The amount of training we do. A lot of our training at that time was just endurance training — I don't ever remember doing fartlek training, or specific hill training, or even specific exercises at that time. Maybe partly because I was very new to the sport, and partly because we didn't see it as molding people for a future career in the sport.

MR: And so that's in the late '70s. When did you retire from being the headmaster of St. Patrick's?
CO: Well, I wasn't headmaster at the time. From '76 to '86, I was an ordinary geography teacher, and then became headmaster in '86, up to '93. And then in '93 I resigned as headmaster, moved to Tambach Teacher's College, but still continued to coach the track team in St. Patrick's. I'm still the St. Patrick's coach, but the difference now is I have other coaches assisting me, which has come up in the last 10 or 12 years.

MR: Who was the biggest, for lack of a better word, raw talent that you ever saw come through St. Patrick's, either someone who people have heard of, or maybe someone who was really talented who never really did anything?
CO: Of course you're always inclined to pick somebody that later on proved that you were right...

MR: Or the opposite, like turning away Paul Ereng.
CO: Yes, exactly, turning away people like [1988 Olympic 800m champion] Paul Ereng or [1993 and 1995 world 5,000m champion] Ismael Kirui, and claiming that they proved you wrong. Maybe that also inspired them to do better.

It's very difficult — so many have come and gone, and so many have made it, and [there are] others who have not made it. There's so many ways of looking at it. I mean, many, many athletes were talented, many, many athletes went on to develop that talent and did very well and broke into new areas. Like Ibrahim Hussein, who went to the college in the US and became perhaps Kenya's first great marathon runner. Then we had people who I gained a lot of personal satisfaction from, people like Peter Rono, who went on to win the Olympics. He came to St. Patrick's as a very young, small boy and would by most coaches not ever be seen as an Olympic champion — very shy, small in stature. People like Wilson Kipketer, who kept a rather low profile while in the school. Wilson was very focused right from the beginning, but didn't really blossom until much later. In fact, he was 23 or 24 before he started hitting the world scene, whereas many a Kenyan athlete starts at 19 or 20 or 21, like Isaac Songok or Augustine [Choge]. But Wilson was always very focused, and in a sense, never really showed his talent while he was in school. Although he did win the secondary school national title, he was never the big star that many others were.

MR: He's only fifth on the St. Patrick's list at 800 meters.
CO: Correct. He wouldn't have come on the scene while in school as forcefully as [800m world junior record holder] Japheth Kimutai, who still has our school record.

Raw talent on the track would probably be Cornelius Chirchir. Somebody who could actually just step out on the track and run 3:33 [for 1,500m] while still in school, and a year after ran 3:30. A guy who was able to run 1:44 [for 800m] while still in school and 46.9 for 400 meters. Somebody who can cover such a wide range of events while still in school and can do it with a minimal amount of effort, not from actual grinding and training and pushing. He could just go out and do it on minimal amount of effort, even minimal amount of preparation.

MR: What abut the flip side — someone who came through here who achieved a lot internationally who at first you weren't all that impressed by?
CO: Wilson Boit Kipketer. While still in school, he never went beyond district championships. In fact, when he started his training at St. Patrick's, which would have been 1989 or so, one of the big athletes in my group at the time was Lydia Cheromei. When I look back in hindsight now, I smile about it — I put him pacesetting for the girls. Shortly afterward, Lydia Cheromei won the world junior cross country. Little did I know that within another five years, Wilson Boit Kipketer would go win the world title in the 3,000-meter steeplechase and go on to break the world record.

MR: Was there a point when you started to think, 'Wow, there's an incredible talent pool here in this area?'
CO: For the first six or seven years here all our concentration was at the schools level. Like I said, there were no international opportunities for our youngsters, so it was very hard to compare them to other athletes from other parts of the world. But then in the mid 80s, when the world junior championships were inaugurated — the first were in Athens in '86 — it was only then that I began to realize that these guys have a lot more potential, a lot more ability than other athletes. It was then my eyes were opened, that I realized I was dealing with world beaters, with guys who have real potential. And around the same time, professionalism was starting to come into the sport, so the two things kind of came together — it opened it up at the junior level, and then [there were] opportunities for athletics to become a career. Then we really started thinking about moving into new programs, training camps, what to do now. This was a whole new development in the sport.

MR: So you're saying that was an eye opener, and yet you've said that you don't get hung up on the whole 'Why?' question.
CO: Why they're so good?

MR: Yeah. But at some point, come on...In the last 28 years, you have to have thought about it at some point.
CO: Yeah, it's a factor, but I think you can tend to oversimplify it by concentrating too much on the 'Why?' and you can maybe forget about the real training that goes on behind the scene and the real work that has to be done. As I mentioned a moment ago, we've seen a lot of talent that has gone astray; they haven't made it. So the 'Why?' in itself is only kind of an initial reaction, or an initial factor. You must build on the 'Why?' If it is genetics, if it is the lifestyle of the people in the area, those are there. But you still have to train them. You still have to identify them, give them the encouragement and opportunities.

MR: With the seniors you're now coaching, you're limiting yourself to Augustine, Isaac, and Rebby. Because of time?
CO: Yes, and the demands of the sport. When somebody has decided that athletics is going to be their career and they ask you to coach them, then you have to realize that these are the demands of the sport: a person has only maybe a short few years to establish themselves, to make money, to invest wisely and to prepare for their future, what they will they do after the sport is over, et cetera. So you're in a new dimension: How many can I handle? How many can I do justice to? This is their life. This is their career.

Of course, it would be possible for me to have many, many more. But could I really feel happy with myself? I don't want my senior athletes to feel that they're just another athlete in the system. I want them to feel special. I want them to feel that I'm giving them my best. So when you have someone like Augustine or Isaac, over the last year or so, when they look back at 2004, or even 2003, they will, I'm sure, in their own quieter moments, evaluate: Is this the best place to train? Is Colm really giving us his full attention? Are we showing the improvement that we expect? Or do we look elsewhere? Do we compare notes with somebody else? In a sense, they've given me the honor and the responsibility to coach them, and I take that seriously. Yes, there are maybe other talented athletes in Kenya of the same caliber as Isaac or Augustine, and they could come say, 'We'd like you to coach us.' I would probably have to say, 'No, and these are my reasons: It's not because you're not talented. It's not because I don't know how to coach such an athlete of your caliber. But I have to do justice to these people I have.'

MR: So it would be hard for you to coach someone if they didn't live in this little house behind you?
CO: Oh yes, because the way I coach, I have a very close relationship with my athletes, in terms of I try to get to know them very well, and both Isaac and Augustine have come through our camp system, so I've known them for a number of years. To me, coaching is more than just a program. It's more than just giving directions or a whistle-and-stopwatch approach. You really have to know the feelings of your athletes, their wants, their needs, their goals, their ups and downs, everything about them. And that is how I coach, and I think they respond to that. And then they build up a certain belief in their coach and maybe time will tell if this is true or false, but they have a certain belief in me, and that gives me then the responsibility to them.

MR: So if a European or American wrote to you and said, 'I know it's not ideal, but will you send me a program?' you would say...
CO: Yes, I could send a program, but a program in itself, its success or failure depends on its application, how the program is actually implemented by the athlete. And I think the program has to be implemented by athlete and coach. Most athletes can go to Web sites or can go to a book and pull out a program and see how does Haile Gebresilasie train, how does Paul Tergat train, how does Catherine Ndereba train, and say, 'Oh, that's it! If I do the same...' Not necessarily. I think one of the mistakes we can make is that programs are not so easily transferable from one athlete to another, because it depends on their interpretation, it depends even on the way they're implemented, and the reaction afterward. So I'm always adjusting programs. I meet the athletes every day, I find out how did the morning session go, I follow them a few times a week in the early season, I follow them more often and monitor them more often as we get closer to competition. In the last month or so, I'll be with them every day in training. So maybe some athletes can take a program and follow it faithfully and regimentally and do well on it. But I do feel for athletes, as they get better and as they move closer to the top or to reaching their potential, you have to be a lot more sensitive about their program and how they follow it.

MR: One thing that really strikes me coming from the West is that it's almost unheard of for Americans or Europeans who are world-class to do three sessions a day. And I know that a lot of the sessions are just easy jogging, because I can keep up with them on those. But still...What is the thought behind finishing a run at 7:00 a.m. and then, three hours later, doing a hard session? That's really pretty much unheard of in the States.
CO: Well, if you look at the sessions over the course of the week, it's not 21 sessions, it might be 14, 15, 16, 17, so you're only averaging really two, two-and-a-half per day. Not all the sessions are tough — in a week, there might be six or seven tough sessions. A lot of the sessions are just...some could just be exercise sessions, some could be gym workouts, some could just be bonding together. Sometimes when Isaac and Augustine go out, they just go along and chat. There's a certain bonding between them, and they get on very well together, and that's why I'm training those two in particular, because they have a lot of similarities: they're quiet, they're very committed to the program, they share a room even, whereas if I had two other athletes, they might want a room each. So even though it's crowded and a small space, they like that. They share so much — they have the same agent, they come from the same district — so they also share in the early stages of their training, they follow the same program. So that's part of it.

The morning session...it's quieter in the morning. Kenyans like getting up early because of the climate. The climate is conducive to a 6:00, 6:30 run in the morning — less dust in the air. Sometimes they feel, I suppose, a certain calm. There's no disturbances, there's no distractions, there's not a lot of vehicles, there's not a lot of noises except the sounds of nature. They like that morning idea. It gives them maybe a certain feeling of isolation and a certain feeling of quietness and time to themselves — they kind of have that morning space to themselves. Many Kenyan athletes of that caliber will tell you if they miss their morning training at 6:00, they feel something is missing out of their day. They like to start the day with that idea.

[During the] 10:00 training session, temperatures are warmer...many times in competitions in Kenya, they have to run in the heat. Cross country or track are done during the day, so temperatures are going to be 25, 26 degrees Centigrade. So we really prepare them to run in the heat, to compete at that level. Also I'm very often with them at 10:00, I'm more available.

Evening sessions can vary: stretching exercises, flexibility exercises or no training at all.

Also maybe many athletes in the US have other interests or other demands on their time besides training. Some might be in college, some might be workers, they might have a job to go to. So maybe it's not very feasible to have three sessions a day. Many of the European athletes who come to Kenya specifically for athletics, after they get to know our system, they don't have any problem with training three times a day. So maybe it's an environmental thing, maybe it's a cultural thing. In the US, climates are different, winter and summer; training three times a day in winter means a lot of training in darkness. Maybe you train on pavement, you might not be near a forest or grass areas to train, so that could be another factor why you don't train as often. So maybe European or American athletes would train three times a day if they were in the Kenyan environment.

MR: Yeah, I was thinking about this, the predictability here — the sun's always going to rise at about the same time, set at the same time. You pretty much know throughout the year what every day is going to be like. In the States, in the winter, you never know what it's going to be like.
CO: Right, the sun might rise at 4:00 a.m. in the summer and 8:00 a.m. in the winter, and you're always kind of adjusting. The lifestyle in Kenya, everybody in the rural areas, you get up at 6:00 because they rise with the sun. That's the life in the rural areas where most of the athletes come from.

MR: So when you're preparing them for the highest levels of track, how do you know that they're getting in the shape that they need to get in? You don't seem like the sort of person who does conversions of 'Well, he ran such and such on a dirt track at 8,000 feet, therefore he's ready to run such and such at sea level on a synthetic track.' You seem more intuitive.
CO: Yes, correct, it's kind of a gut feeling that somebody is ready. Also, we do certain sessions with others, maybe one or two other athletes who have done performances in Europe, so we can compare that. I have a good feeling for it. I don't know what the feeling is, but I have a good feeling for what an athlete needs.

And maybe also what I said about my approach of getting to know the athletes in the preparatory stages like now. I get to know Augustine and Songok, what they think 2005 should be, what their goals are, building on what they did in 2004. After finishing 2004, both of them came back, they took some time off, but I didn't want to give them a very big time off — they took about six weeks' break, and then they came back here to lay the foundation and make sure they didn't fall off too much from the form they reached in 2004, so we have something to build on. I really won't know until they step on a cross country course on the 8th of January how our training has been going over the last two months. It's only then we can compare to other Kenyans. But I'm giving myself enough time to do adjustments before the major cross country races come up in February. [Note: At a cross country meet in Eldoret, Kenya, on January 8, Songok finished second, one second behind 2003 world 5,000m champion Eliud Kipchoge. Augustine Choge placed fourth, just behind the steeplechase silver medalist from last summer's Olympics.]

MR: When you say 'six-week break,' how is that defined?
CO: They were at home for about a month with their families. No training.

MR: Nothing at all?
CO: I don't think they did anything. I'm not worried. I back off as well from them and say, 'Look, train if you want to train, don't train if you don't want to train. And I'm not going to ask you whether you trained or not, because if I do, you may feel, 'Oh, I should have been training.' So I'm not going to ask you whether you did anything at home.' Even when they came back, for the first couple of weeks, I didn't check whether they were training or not. I didn't check whether they were getting up in the morning or if they were training at 10:00; there really was no checking on their training for another couple of weeks.

MR: And that was when?
CO: Middle of October. My main focus when they came back was to look at how they thought 2004 went: Did they achieve their goals? Did they feel they did their best? What were their high points? What were their low points? I was just kind of sussing them out mentally for a couple of weeks, and during that time I didn't really follow anything of their training, of their physical training. Only after all that and looking at 2005 did I have a good idea of what they were thinking about and how they see 2004 and how they're setting their goals for 2005. Now I was able to start tackling a program.

MR: What are their goals for 2005?
CO: For cross country, we're not too particularly anxious that Isaac should make the cross country team [for the world championships]. He's really looking at Helsinki, which is the longer goal, the world [track and field] championships, 1,500 meters. So all our build-up is for Helsinki for Isaac. If he makes the cross country team, it's a bonus. Last year he made it, and that was good, a good foundation.

For Augustine, it's his first real step into the senior ranks. Cross country will be more important for him, that he make the cross country team at 4K. That will be his early goal. I'm hoping if everything goes well time-wise — that Songok breaks 3:30 for 1,500 and Augustine breaks 12:50 for 5,000. Judging from 2004 and from the way Augustine is thinking himself, he should be on the team for Helsinki. Although he shouldn't look at individuals — I kind of keep athletes away from looking at who your opponents might be, don't look at judging who might displace you from the team — but in my own deliberations, athletes like John Kibowen must be near the end of their careers as 5,000-meter runners. You'll probably see him at 10,000. There are only three Kenyans who ran under 13:00 for 5,000 this year, so that puts Choge in the top three. The only misgiving I have about it is he's still a little bit too young to really make a big impression as a 5,000-meter runner. But then when you look at someone like [Kenenisa] Bekele, who's probably 22, 23 now, the world record holder, then maybe that gives you a bit of encouragement, maybe he's not too young. But I would still have that little bit of hesitation for a year or two. So many good athletes bust on the scene and then don't sustain their career.

MR: If they make the team for Helsinki, you want to train them right up to the meet, not hand them off to the national coaches like you did with Isaac before the Olympics. Have you made any progress yet in your efforts to maintain control of their training?
CO: Last year was the first year that I really came up against that, because before that I was not really training senior athletes. I would like to see certainly a big shake-up by the federation in terms of facing the realities of today's professionalism in the sport, that an athlete should have their own coach right up to the time of the championships, and not just changing horses in midstream, just at a time which is critical for the athlete. This year, at the national championships, the trials for the Olympics, Songok was at peak fitness. He ran 3:35 in Nairobi at altitude, won it. Now, there's no logical reason why somebody who wins the Kenyan Olympic Trials and a few weeks later runs a 3:30 in Zurich is not at the best of his career. Two or three weeks later, he goes out in Athens, makes the final, yes, but only scraping into the semi-final and final, performs poorly in the final. That's not the Isaac I knew. That's not the guy I prepared for the Trials or for Zurich. Completely different person. I'm still not sure what happened in between, but I kind of have a good idea what didn't happen. And that was a disappointment to me.

Augustine stayed with me, won the world juniors, ran one more race after that, came back, spent another month with me end of July, almost throughout the Olympics in August, went back at the end of August, runs a 7:36, runs 12:57. When I see that in contrast with what happened to Isaac...the contrast is what makes it more difficult to swallow.

MR: We've talked many times about what you call the mushroom champions — Kenyans who seem to come from nowhere and win something big, and then disappear. Are there different means to prevent that with men and women? If the goal is to have Kenyans have longer careers after reaching the top, are the means to achieve that goal different for men and women?
CO: For men, it is easier in the sense that men tend to be more ambitious, by virtue of their culture — they're the breadwinners, the people who are expected to make the money, they are the ones who maybe have less inhibiting taboos or restrictions by their culture to progress, to travel, leaving home, et cetera. So the men's problems tend to be that they have a specific goal — for many of them, to make money. If they achieve it quickly, they're satisfied quickly, they fall off quickly, and particularly men who run road races, particularly marathons. You go out, you become a millionaire overnight, you go from rags to riches, you pick up two or three million shillings in a major marathon, which for a Kenyan is absolutely beyond their wildest dreams. You've satisfied your goal, so why bother anymore? The interest goes, the ambition to win again, and that can happen with marathon runners who are particularly young, in their early 20s.

We concentrate mainly for our men on the track. Big money is less likely to be made quickly on the track, with the result that you get a greater opportunity to develop physically, mentally, financially. You make a little money, you learn how to handle a little, but you haven't really satisfied your financial needs, at least for the long term. You learn how to handle a couple thousand dollars first, and then 50 or 60 thousand, and then a hundred thousand, so gradually you come up so that you learn as you go along. You're not just becoming very rich overnight.

Girls tend to mature younger, with the result that many of them are running like seniors at the age of 15, 16, 17. And because Kenya doesn't have such a wide variety of seniors, that's even more so, that they can very quickly catch up with some of their senior counterparts. The result, then, is that the girls, maybe for cultural reasons, are talking about getting married when they're 20, 21, 22, so they say, 'Okay, we should make our money, we should make our career by 20.' So they're out running many, many races, particularly those that go into road racing. They get burned out. There are certain social pressures on them to get married — parents sometimes don't fully understand what their daughters are doing. 'What are you actually up to with all this running? What's going on in your life? You might be better off looking for a husband than looking for a race.'

You'll notice from the camp, generally, the ages of the girls are a few years younger than the boys. We have many girls from primary schools running some very good times, 15:47, 15:48 for 5,000 meters, and that worries me a little bit. If I had a way of slowing up the girls and letting them mature a bit before they're set loose in the wider world of athletics...That's why I'm ever trying to get them into schools, get them an education, get them to colleges even in the US to just give them a couple more years to mature before they start real competitive athletics on the wider scale. We try to prepare them for that, for the competition, for the wider world of the sport, so that they can handle it. It's not just a matter of being good as an athlete, but your personality, how you sell the sport, what you give back to the sport, how you present yourself, how you handle your affairs.

MR: Is it getting easier for girls and young women to gain social acceptance in terms of what they're doing? Is it easier, as in Rebby's case, to explain to their parents why they're 23 and not getting married anytime soon?
CO: Oh yes, it is becoming easier. As they've seen some role models go ahead — Tegla Loroupe, Joyce Chepchumba, Lornah Kiplagat — as they've seen them make money, build houses, build camps, have farms, the parents are gradually beginning to realize, 'My daughter may be more valuable to me as an athlete than in the form of a dowry from her husband.' And education. More and more girls are gaining access to education, which is good. Also, more and more of them are going to the US on track scholarships. Also, of course, parents have more access to the media, so they see the Olympics, they see competitions from overseas, so that also helps them. Kenya now is starting to organize more road races, more competitions within the country, for which money is an incentive. We had the Standard Chartered Marathon recently in Nairobi, with a married lady from Pokot making a lot of money. People in Pokot, that cannot go unnoticed. So I'm sure there are many young girls in Pokot coming out to run now. They all want to be like this one who won the marathon.

MR: You've been involved for so long in nurturing young talent, and now you're seeing that talent through to the senior ranks. What needs to happen infrastructurally in Kenya for that feeding system to continue? What needs to happen to allow identification and nurturing of young talent so that it reaches the senior level?
CO: Originally in Kenya, the identification and nurturing of talent was done largely by schools, the school system, which was very strong, very dynamic and very well supported. School championships, when I first came, were a fantastic spectacle, and that's where I learned my coaching from, because schools were competitive. There were five or six schools in Kenya that were really churning out athletes; they would go to the US on scholarship or into the armed forces.

Then when professionalism came into the sport, shoe companies became a factor in the identification of talent. So they set up various camps throughout the country — Fila camp, Nike camp, adidas camp, et cetera. So the emphasis has shifted away from schools. I would like to see schools being the foundation. I would still like to see education of all our young athletes, and that's what we do in our program. Because the needs of the sport are more than just training and running. And the opportunities from the sport, be it opportunities to travel or further your education, should be based in schools.

The training camps have been set up independent of the federation, so the federation has little or no say or control over what goes on in the training camps. In a sense, the federation took a back seat when all of this was happening. They never became involved. They themselves didn't invest in youth development or identification of talent. They largely ignored the school system where athletes come from. They did support some athletes, in terms of paying their school fees or a token appreciation for their performances internationally, those who were still in school. So I'd still like to go back to having a good school foundation among our athletes. That's why when we have athletes who have fees problems, we say, 'Don't drop out of school, stay in school, an education is so important to you.'

I'd like to see the federation paying more attention to the development of athletes, rather than just selection of athletes when we come to a national assignment. You've seen no federation official in the camp here, even though you might expect to in a period of three weeks. You would think surely some representative would come along during our training camp, to a camp that has some outstanding young athletes, and make it their business: 'We must get around and see what's happening in these camps. Who's training them? What's going on? Who's chaperoning them? How is this camp financed? We're going to select a team for the world youth championships next year — where are they likely to come from?' Instead, the first meeting between some of these athletes and a federation official is the day they're going to be selected in Nairobi. You can't expect a very good rapport between such athletes and the federation if they've never seen them before. Then they're handed over to the federation, they're handed over to a new coach, who they don't know from a hole in the ground. So a better link, for early identification and for athletes to progress from youth to junior to senior level, there has to be a much closer working relationship between the federation and the athletes.

Shoe companies that finance camps shouldn't only look at the cream, as they peek their heads up and show 'This is going to be the one next year or the year after.' I think they need to look a bit further down the line and support people at a much earlier stage, be it supporting them in terms of equipment, in terms of camps like this junior camp, or in terms even of school, paying their school fees.

Now some do occasionally have an interest, but it's not done in a systematic way. The Discovery Kenya competition will come up on the 23rd of January, and there will be agents there, seeing who's doing well. Do they really know how that athlete reached that stage? Do they really know their background? Do they really know their problems? I think a lot more has to be done by the shoe companies in terms of thinking more developmentally. Now, in a sense, we are the ones who take the risk. I mean, I'm in the high-risk situation. I have 60 athletes here in camp. Of the 60, I'll be lucky if maybe 15 will ever go on to make a successful career in athletics, between 15 and 20. What happens to the other 40? I have a responsibility also to them, so that at the end of the day they have gained some experience, or some enjoyment out of the sport, or have gotten some positive influence from it, maybe to live a healthier lifestyle, or go to the US on scholarship if they can't make it professionally, or at least make something at the local level. So I have to keep looking at the wider picture. A shoe company or an agent can come in and say, 'I only want those 15. The other 45, they're not really of any interest to us.' They're of interest to me, and I feel a responsibility to them. And then, of course, one of the 45 starts to come through in a year or two, and then suddenly they're interested in him! So I would like to see more attention by the federation, more from the shoe companies on long-term development, the importance of education, the revival of the school system in terms of really making it meaningful.

Junior championships have tended to replace the school system. Federation officials don't worry about schools competitions anymore. They go to the national championships in Nairobi. But for some particular reason an athlete might not run in the nationals — maybe an injury, maybe for financial reasons, couldn't afford to go to Nairobi. They miss out on those. They only see those who reach the top level. But if you're following the school system, you'll see that this guy has been doing well, and he needs to be recognized as a future athlete.

And often when our juniors drop off...Two years ago, a particular set of juniors went to the world cross country. Here we have our six boys and our six girls. I don't know if the federation ever follows up. If you ask one of the top members of the federation, 'Where is Valentine Koech? Do you know anything about her? She was 12th in Dublin two years ago. She was 10th in Lausanne last year. Where's she now? Has she finished school? Did she drop out of school? Is she married?' There's no interest beyond selection, competition and go home.

I doubt if Augustine has talked to any member of the federation since the day he stepped off the track in Grosetto [after winning the world junior championship] in July. Now here is what some people would consider maybe Kenya's greatest potential athlete for the future. The federation should be on the edge of their seats as to, 'Where's Augustine Choge? Who's coaching him? Where's he training? Has he an injury? Is he going to do senior 4K or junior 8K next year?' Maybe even just, 'How are you? How's Iten? How's the weather?' Nonexistent. In another country, if you had a 12:57 athlete, the federation would be all over him. Not that I want them to interfere with his training, but just keep in touch with him, just show a concern, just show an interest that there is such a fellow called Augustine Choge and he has potential. But come next June and he makes the team: 'Oh, where is Augustine Choge? We have to get ready. We have to train him for Helsinki.' As if he hasn't been training before. 'Now he has to be trained. Where's the national coach? Here's the boy you have to train for Helsinki.' As if he just fell out of the sky.

(Interview conducted December 23, 2004, posted January 13, 2005)