Sammy Wanjiru: A Column By Len Johnson

It took only one year to validate the assertion that Sammy Wanjiru’s bravura performance in winning the marathon at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games had changed the way the race was run.

The Berlin 2009 saw another Kenyan athlete – Abel Kirui – adopt much the same tactics to win the world championships race. Temporarily (such changes are seldom permanent), the marathon has become the province of the bold and aggressive rather than the cautious and calculating.

Sadly, that may now be Sammy Wanjiru’s legacy after the first Kenyan Olympic marathon champion died in a fall from a balcony of his home in Nyahururu last Sunday (15 May).

The news of Wanjiru’s death came through on the internet, as news does these days. Mostly, the “I can remember what I was doing when . . .” question is these days answered: “I was on the internet.” Within hours, it was confirmed and we were dealing with the reality that the life one of the brightest talents ever seen in distance running had been snuffed out prematurely at the age of 24.

How long marathoners will keep on running the race the way Wanjiru attacked the Beijing marathon remains to be seen. Conservatism has a way of re-asserting itself.

Wanjiru’s run is seared into the memories of those lucky enough to be there. All the talk of the Beijing Olympic marathons had dwelt remorselessly on the conditions. It would be hot; it would be humid; it would be polluted; it would be injurious, ruinous even, to health.

Normally, you might say that nobody told Sammy Wanjiru, but that would be short-changing his performance as there was little that was normal about it. Unless he did his final preparation on Mars, he must have been fully aware of the likely conditions.

Wanjiru simply ignored the heat and humidity to produce what many of us believe was the greatest marathon ever run. He started at world record pace, ignoring the bright sun and rising temperature. He raced fiercely, responding immediately and instinctively to every attempt to wrest control of the race away from him.

At the finish, Wanjiru fell to the ground. He had long since ground every opponent into it. He reached the finish in the Bird’s Nest stadium in 2:06:32, taking almost a full three minutes off the Olympic record previously held by Carlos Lopes.

It was fabulous stuff. Steve Moneghetti, commentating for Australian television, called it the greatest marathon ever run. Given the occasion, it is hard to disagree.

To the outside world, Wanjiru was a virtually unknown 21-year-old who had become Kenya’s first Olympic marathon champion. Distance running fans had seen him coming: a world junior record 26:41 for 10,000 metres; three world records at the half-marathon; a win in the 2007 Fukuoka marathon and a 2:05:24 second in the 2008 London marathon commands some attention.

None, it is safe to see, foresaw a performance such as Wanjiru put up that hot August Sunday morning.

Although bothered by injury and personal upheaval since, Wanjiru still managed to astound. He ran seven marathons, winning five of the six he finished. And he ran the best races against most of the best runners: Fukuoka, London, the Olympics, Chicago.

(Marathon expert Sean Hartnett analysed his racing and wrote an insightful obituary for Track&FieldNews.

See http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=656&Itemid=118 )

Wanjiru’s second win in Chicago last October is the other race which stands out in his all too brief catalogue. To say he beat Tsegay Kebede 2:06:24 to 2:06:43 is to tell only a tiny part of the story. Rather, he triumphed over Kebede after the two had slugged it out like
heavyweight boxers over the final kilometres.

All the time, it was Kebede who looked to be landing the telling blows. Again and again, Wanjiru looked as if he were beaten, only to come surging back.

Just when it looked as if Wanjiru was finished, he came charging back past Kebede to win by almost 100 metres. Do yourself a favour: hunt down the video of the race finish and watch it.

In looking for comparisons, I think immediately of Robert de Castella’s two great finishes against Juma Ikangaa at the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games and Carlos Lopes in the 1983 Rotterdam marathon. But they are inexact; in neither race did ‘Deek’ relinquish control. He caught the runaway Ikangaa late in the Brisbane race and withstood a brief flurry; and he stayed resolutely (just) ahead of Lopes over the final five kilometres in Rotterdam.

Wanjiru successfully reversed the momentum of a race which seemed to be lost. It was as if Ikangaa, having been caught, had fought back and won; or, to take a boxing example, as if Muhammad Ali had got up from being knocked down in the final round of his first fight against Joe Frazier and ko-ed ‘Smokin’ Joe.

We will never know what Sammy Wanjiru might have gone on to achieve. Many have already pronounced him the greatest (male) marathoner ever. That may ignore the claims of Abebe Bikila and Frank Shorter, among others, but had Wanjiru gone on to a second Olympic gold medal at London 2012 there would have been few arguments against that judgement.

For now, the greatest championship marathon ever run and the greatest marathon fightback win are more than enough to put him among the marathon immortals.