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High-level performers

In the 1960 Rome Olympics an unknown Ethiopian runner called Abebe Bikila stunned the world when he won the marathon barefoot.

Some people say that if he'd worn running shoes, he wouldn't have won.

He didn't wear shoes because he wanted to feel as relaxed on roads as he did running up and down hills at home in the Rift Valley.

four years later at the Tokyo Olympics he won the marathon again, this time breaking the world record and winning by an incrediblemargin of four minutes.

Since than African runners, mainly from the Rift Valley and Ethiopian, have dominated the world records in every distance from 800 metres to the marathon.

Their superiority is so great that other nations can no longer keep up.

In the USA, for example, road-running races are now beinh held that either exclude foreigners from prize money or are for American runners only.

It is not surprising that Rift Valley athletes have an advantage over European and North American athletes.

One reasons is that they live and train at high altitudes.

Oxygen levels fall the further you go above sea level and the body compensates for this in several ways: the lungs get bigger, the red blood cells increase and the circulation improve.

In addition to this, the Rift Valley athletes trained from childhood to run several miles to school every day.

Although these athletes clearly thrive on high-altitude training, it is not clear that people born and raised at sea level benefit from this type of training.

In 1988 the British athlete Sebastian Coe spent weeks training in the mountains.

When he returned to Britain immediately afterwards to compete for a place in the Olympic team, he suferred frome the side effects of the change of altitude.

He was sick, dizzy and wak and he wasn't selected.

He would probably have had a better chance if he had allowed time for his body to reacclimatise to running at sea level.

But there are other reasons why the Rift Valley runners dominate middle- and long-distance running.

The first is tradition.

Young people are deeply inspired by the great runners of the 1960s such as Abebe Bikila, Kip Keino and Ben Jipcho.

In the USA young people want to be basketball players like Michael Jordon; in Britain they want to be footballers like David Beckham or Michael Owen; but in Kenya and Ethiophian they want to be runners like Daniel Komen and Haile Gebrsalassie.

The second of hunger for success.

Now that athletics is a professional sport, it has become a way out of the poverty trap for many Africans.

Running has become the passport to fame and fortune for the Rift Valley runners in the same way that football, basketball or boxing are in many other countries.