Athlete Feature: Boaz Cheboiywo

By Bob Ramsak

When the nation's top collegiate runners line up at the start of the 65th NCAA Cross Country Championships Monday, November 25, there is no doubt in the mind of defending champion Boaz Cheboiywo about who will cross the line first.

"I know it will be tougher this year," the 24 year-old Kenyan acknowledges, "but there's no doubt that I'm going to come out victorious."

That simple?

"Yup," he concludes, with an infectious laugh.

He exudes a confidence befitting a defending champion --low-key, relaxed and jovial, with no apparent reluctance. And the goods, he says, to back it up.

"I know I'm in top shape," he says, "And I'm not being cocky about it. But I'm going there to defend my title, and I know I'm going to pull out the national title if all goes well."

In September, most would have agreed with the Eastern Michigan senior's assessment. After his stunning rise from obscurity during last year's undefeated cross country campaign, leaving course records and humbled opponents in his wake, the affable Cheboiywo capped his junior year in May by winning the NCAA 10,000 meter crown in the blistering heat and humidity of Baton Rouge. His track title, run "at an easy tempo" and won by a 30-second margin after lapping 11 of the 18 finishers, was even more dominant than his 20-second win at Furman the previous fall. Fast-forward a few months to the pre-season polls, where pundits picked Cheboiywo, known to all simply as "Boaz," as the overwhelming favorite to become the first back-to-back cross country champion since Arkansas's Godfrey Siamusiye successfully defended in 1996. The race for the individual title, virtually all agreed, would be for second.

But his 2002 season began in unfamiliar territory. At the Griak Invitational in Minneapolis in late September, Cheboiywo was outkicked by Brigham Young sophomore Kip Kangogo, another Kenyan newcomer, whose rise from anonymity this year parallels the Boaz of last year.

"No, "I've never even heard of him," Cheboiywo admits somewhat incredulously, but quickly dismisses the loss as a significant barometer of where he is right now. "It was just a surprise, you know? I was glad that loss came in the first race, when our training just began. I used (the race) to gauge my strength. Furthermore, I hadn't even trained at that point. It was after that first race that I began some intense training."

Now, he adds, "I'm in the best shape of my life."

He bounced back with an easy win at the Michigan Intercollegiate meet on October 11, before his season took a bizarre turn -- literally -- at the Mid-American Conference Championships in Oxford, Ohio on November 2. With a 100 meter lead at the 6-kilometer point, Cheboiywo took the wrong bend on the course, and was forced to backtrack nearly 800 meters. He eventually finished 16th, while Eastern Michigan, a perennial MAC power, lost the team title by a single point. The team filed an appeal that was later rejected.

"I just want to forget about it," he says, still dumbfounded. "It was so bad," he says, insisting that course marshals directed him the wrong way. "In my heart, I can't forgive it."

One positive, as far as Cheboiywo is concerned, did result.

"The MAC Championship has given me more anger, and more desire to do even more than at last year's nationals. It has really motivated me. Now I'm just ready to take on those guys again."

Motivation to run began early for Cheboiywo, a Kalenjin. But, as is the case for many Kenyan runners, it was not of the competitive variety. Born on August 2, 1978 in Tirap, a small town of 3,000 near Eldoret, Cheboiywo comes from a family of runners -- most notable is his older brother, 1,500 meter specialist David Kisang, who has seen regular duty as a pacemaker on the Grand Prix circuit, and led Daniel Komen to his 3,000 meter and 5,000 meter world records in 1997. But his is also a family of farmers as well, and the young Boaz spent much of his youth tending to his family's goats and cows, which meant, more often than not, chasing them through fields and forests. "I spent a lot of time running from here to there."

He began running competitively in the fall of 1997 in local and regional meets near his home, and by the following year considered himself mainly a 1,500 meter runner, running in the 3:47-3:49 range. He later added the steeplechase, clocking an 8:42 at the 1998 Kenyan Commonwealth Games Trials.

Urged and assisted by his brother, in 2000 he joined the training group led by three-time World steeplechase champion Moses Kiptanui at their high-altitude base in Nyahururu, in the rarified air near Mt. Kenya. It was there, at 7,800 feet above sea level, that he first experienced the intensive workouts locals dub "the Kenyan way." Of the grueling regimen of morning, mid-morning and evening runs, Cheboiywo recalls, "It was really challenging in the beginning, but after that, I got into the transition and it went really well. After about three weeks, I felt that I fit in very well."

His first international races came later that summer in the British Milers Club Grand Prix series. He began with an 8:39 effort in the steeple, an event he eventually found to be too tough on his body physically. "I was too prone to injuries with the steeplechase." A week later he followed with a 13:30.22 in the 5,000, still a PR in the event he now considers his favorite. "That came when I still had a stress fracture."

Injuries lurked in the shadows of his 2001 unbeaten cross country streak, with a lingering achilles tendon problem forcing him to sit out the 2002 indoor season. That, he says, is behind him now. "It's been a wonderful year for me," he says of his senior year. "I have not had any problems. Right now I feel ready for it. Hopefully I will stay this way."

He still keeps in touch with Kiptanui, his first mentor, albeit on a friendly, not professional, level, giving his undivided allegiance to Eastern Michigan distance coach John Goodridge.

"He's been the best coach of my life," Cheboiywo says of Goodridge, now in his second year at Eastern. "I'm very content with him and everything's he's done for me."

So content, in fact, that plans to stay in Michigan and with Goodridge after he graduates. He will be finishing up a degree in Geography this semester, but recently enrolled in a teaching program, and hopes to land a teaching job near Ypsilanti and would eventually like to coach high school athletes as well.

While he and Goodridge still have to map out his competitive plans for 2003, he's leaning towards the mile and 3,000 indoors, before taking on the 5,000 and 10,000 outdoors.

"I'm going to double outdoors, and run the DMR," he says. "I want to leave something special for my college and the community to thank them for giving me my scholarship." His indoor debut, he says, will come at the Boston Indoor Games in late January, where he plans to run the 3,000.

But first comes Terre Haute, and his attempt to become only the ninth back-to-back men's winner since the inception of the NCAA Cross Country Championships in 1938.

"I'm very ready," he says, with calm exacting certainty. "It will be a fast race, and I think it will be a fun race. There is Jorge Torres. And Kangogo, who knows he can run with me right now. And Kimani, I know he is in top shape right now."

But ultimately, he believes, the race is his to lose.

"I'm not going to run against anybody. I'm going to run to my best ability, which I know I'm going to be fine with."

(Posted November 14, 2002)