Where poverty propels athletes

Temperatures in Nyahururu can dip to as low as 10 degrees at night and, as the sun’s first rays shine on the town near the western tip of the Aberdares, a group of young men shuffles towards the local sports stadium.

They show up as early as 6 a.m. in the hope that hard work at the training ground will eventually help them achieve the glory – and the riches – that come with winning races in Europe.

Yet, as the tragic events of last Sunday night when Samuel Wanjiru, the most famous graduate of this academy, plunged to his death illustrate, these poor teenagers are ill-prepared for the fame and fortune they struggle so hard to attain.

There is a very thin line between the utter poverty into which they are born and the hundreds of millions of shillings that could come with success on the track.

“They are poor. Their parents cannot raise even Sh500 or Sh1,000 when they present an athlete for training,” said Robert Kioni, a retired soldier who set up a training camp for athletes in 1971 and became a coach in 1975.

Mr Kioni was Samuel Wanjiru’s coach until 2009 and is an old friend of the family. Wanjiru’s mother and grandfather asked him to take the marathon prospect under his wing in 1998.

Solomon Wachira, another coach and retired athlete who handled Wanjiru for a short time, told the Sunday Nation times are often hard for the athletes who almost always come from poor backgrounds.

And that’s where the foreign coaches and the sponsorship packages to run for Japanese companies such as Toyota and the electronics company NEC come in.

Those who are deemed talented enough are offered the scholarships that enable them to undergo training and education up to secondary level. In return, they act as brand ambassadors for the firms.

“You will not be paid for running, but the companies will sponsor you to enter a race. The only requirement will be that you wear a bib bearing the company’s name during races. It is good advertising for them,” Mr Wachira said.

According to Mr Kioni, the youngsters are also given a “disturbance allowance” of about Sh42,000 per month and three plane tickets; two for the return journey and an extra one for emergencies.

Double amount

Mr Wachira said the athletes are paid up to 600,000 yen (about Sh600,000 at current rates). The amount could double if a runner wins a race and gets a bonus.

Samuel Wanjiru, the man who would later become a legend in the town and famous for picking up huge bills at bars and the many flashy vehicles he drove, started his professional life this way.

He was snapped up before accepting admission to Irigithathi secondary school in Ndaragwa near Nyahururu and taken to Japan.

“I got the chance for him to go to Japan when an international secondary school and Japan wanted students from Kenya on scholarship,” Mr Kioni said.

Mr Wachira said the sudden change in fortune can overwhelm any young man from the slopes of the Aberdares – as he once was – bringing with it stories that would sound improbable.

Nothing prepares the athletes for the change in fortunes.

“Look at it this way. Before I left for Japan in 1995, I was not worth even Sh100. When I came back, I had 16 million in Japanese yen which I converted to shillings in Nairobi,” he said.

He said those who strike it rich are accompanied by a host of hangers-on who know everything about their moneyed friends and usually tend to leave when the money taps run dry.

At the Kawa Falls bar where Wanjiru picked up Jane Nduta -- the woman who was with him the night he died -- this writer was told that the athlete once ran up a bill of Sh51,000 and handed over the money plus a Sh9,000 tip to the manager the following day.

Francis Kamau, who took over from Mr Kioni last year, said although the gold medallist drank regularly, he was very disciplined and focused on his training.

“Kamau (Wanjiru) was an extraordinary human being,” said Mr Kamau, who is fondly referred to as “Master” by the athletes under his watch. “Even when he spent the whole night in a bar, he would show up for training on time and still beat the rest.”

And although Wanjiru feared the Ethiopian greats Kenenisa Bekele and Tsegay Kebede, he was confident he could beat them.

“He would ask me, ‘How does Kebede run? How different am I from Bekele? I have seen his thighs, they are like mine. I can beat him’” said the coach.

Wanjiru had been planning to announce his resurgence to the world at the difficult New York marathon in November, with a half-marathon before that to test his fitness.