Out Of Africa

Forget for a moment all that the great runners of Africa will take away from the Olympics, those shiny souvenirs of gold, silver and bronze. Savor instead what they will leave behind with us: a sense of wonder. In a world growing smaller and less mysterious by the day, the African runners show there are still things on earth with the power to confound and amaze us.

Ron Clarke, the great Australian runner of the 1960s, calls the present "a phenomenal era, the best for distance running we've ever seen." It is also, as the accompanying chart makes clear, an era of African dominance. The Atlanta Games should see the coronation of three great African runners: Noureddine Morceli of Algeria in the 1,500 meters, Moses Kiptanui of Kenya in the 3,000-meter steeplechase and Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia in the 10,000 and probably also the 5,000. All three hold the world records in their specialties, and each has won several world championships. The only thing missing from each runner's trophy case is an Olympic gold medal.

African runners first grabbed our attention in the 1960s, awing us not only with their times but also with their style, their apparent disregard for science and common sense. The first great African runner, Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia, won the 1960 Olympic marathon racing barefoot through Rome. He wore shoes to win the '64 marathon, in Tokyo, in world-record time, then declared that he could have gone another 10 kilometers (6.2 miles).

Four years later at the Mexico City Olympics, Kenyan steeplechaser Amos Biwott did what no other man has done: He sailed over the water jump lap alter lap and won the race with two dry shoes. Then came fellow Kenyan Kip Keino, remembered for his ritual of tossing his cap into the infield as well as for his '72 Olympic steeplechase victory, and Tanzanian Filbert Bayi, whose seemingly suicidal front-running helped him break Jim Ryun's mile record in 1975.

These days, the stories come not just from Kenya and Ethiopia, those high-altitude cradles of cardiovascular supermen and superwomen, but from throughout Africa. In the last decade there have been marathoners from Djibouti, Namibia and Tanzania, and a superb 400 hurdler from Zambia, Samuel Matete. Out of Burundi comes 22-year-old Venuste Niyongabo, who fled the charnel house his country has become and now offers Morceli his greatest challenge in the 1,500. And from Mozambique there is 800-meter favorite Maria Mutola, plucked at age 14 from a dusty soccer field and plunked down a few months later at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

Just when you think you've seen the most precocious athlete of the lot, he tells you that his little brother is even faster but had to stay home to help with the cattle. "Kenyans," says Morceli with a sigh. "There are always new Kenyans."

Why are the Kenyans so good? "I think they have a genetic predisposition," says Steve Holman, the top-ranked U.S. miler, who says that although he is an African-American, he is different from the Kenyans. "I know that's not politically correct, but their bodies seem to have been designed for distance running."

Kenyan men took the first five places at this year's Boston Marathon, and the Kenyan team has won the world cross-country championship for 11 straight years. Where else but in Kenya could a young man have a childhood friend who is an Olympic medalist, a cousin and a teacher who both set world records for 10,000 meters, and another cousin who won the 10,000 in two world championships? That is true of Kiptanui, whose pal William Mutwol won bronze in the '92 steeplechase in Barcelona, whose cousin Richard Chelimo and schoolmaster Samson Kimobwa set world records in the 10,000, and whose other cousin Ismael Kirui won the 5,000 at the '93 and '95 worlds.

A further explanation for the dominance of Kenyan and other African runners is economic. Outside of soccer, there is virtually no professional sport in most of the countries we are talking about. Running provides athletes "the one opportunity to make what you might call 'proper money,' " says Kim McDonald, a London-based agent for about 30 world-class Kenyan runners. Kenya's per capita income is $292 a year; Kiptanui can command $50,000 per meet in appearance money alone.

African runners are forcing us to rethink our basic assumptions about racing and about what is humanly possible. For some time the model has been a year-long buildup to a peak racing period of, say, a month. We've also assumed that distance runners are not ready to start smashing records until they are well into their 20's. Last year Gebrselassie exploded those two myths. At age 22 he set a world record for two miles (8:07.46) in late May; set another world mark, in the 10,000 (26:43.53), in early June; won the 10,000 world title in early August; set an astonishing 5,000-meter record (12:44.39) in mid-August; and finally, in early September, beat Kiptanui in the 5,000. Gebrselassie is the first man to hold the 5,000 and 10,000 records simultaneously since Kenya's Henry Rono in 1982.