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Lead Stories: Monday, December 1, 2008

Note on the News: Violence In Kenya Reaches Top Athletes

Posted January 3rd, 2008 at 2:00 PM by David Monti

Section: News & Results

Lornah Kiplagat NYmini07 courtesy of photorun The violence in Kenya following the disputed presidential election has touched some of distance running’s top athletes, according to a well-reported story by Elias Makori, sports editor of the Daily Nation.

Makori reports that world marathon champion Luke Kibet was caught up in a machete attack and is lucky to be alive. That news comes on the heels of a report that Lucas Sang, an Olympic 400m runner, was hacked to death, his body burned. Makori also reports extensively on the efforts by Lornah Kiplagat (Pictured) and her husband and manager, Pieter Langerhorst, to defend their High Altitude Training Center in Iten, not far from Eldoret.

You can read the full story here:

http://www.aipsmedia.com/index.php?page=news&cod=1767&tp=n
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Challengers added to Berlin Marathon field

Posted August 22nd, 2007 at 6:33 AM by David Monti

Section: News & Results, Marathons

Organizers of the 34th real, - Berlin Marathon announced today that four strong Kenyan athletes will line up for the Sept. 30 race to challenge defending champion Haile Gebrselassie.

The group is led by the veteran Sammy Korir whose 2:04:56 second place finish at Berlin in 2003 is still the second-fastest marathon ever run. Korir, 35, ran last year’s edition of the race, splitting 25 km in 1:15:48, but he dropped out in the 26th kilometer with a hamstring injury. Korir has not recorded a marathon finish in 2007.
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Is the World catching
up to the Kenyans?

Posted August 9th, 2007 at 8:50 PM by Jimmie R. Markham

Section: News & Results, Track & Field

With headlines such as “Current Crop of Runners Not Up to Task” and “Change Tact[ics] Or Sink”, recent articles published by Kenyan journalists have been harshly critical of Kenyan distance running. Among other concerns are that Ethiopian and Eritrean athletes are closing the gap. But are these reports accurate?

Not according to statistical evidence, which shows that Kenyan running is as dominant as ever – if not more so. I broke down the statistics into all the middle-distance and all the long-distance performances from 1997-2006. I grouped all elite (world-class) performances for middle-distance (800m, 1500m, Mile, 3000m and 300m SC) into one chart and all elite performances for distance (5000m, 10000m) into another chart. I also broke it down even further, analyzing the top 100 performances of all time for both the middle-distance and the distance categories.

The Kenyans have dominated both the middle-distance and the distance categories, both in the elite and the top 100 of all time performances. In fact, in the middle-distance category, Kenyan runners have run more top 100 all time performances tham the rest of the world combined.
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