BY PAUL RADFORD

SEOUL: Reuter: Olympic middle and Jong distance track champions came out of Africa to give Kenya a gold medal sweep.

Peter Rono, 1,500 meters winner, and John Ngusi, first over 5,000 meters, on Saturday joined the long line of natural running talents to emerge from the country and take the Olympics by storm.

On the last full day of Athletics Competition they completed a Kenyan scoop of all the Men’s races between 800 and 5,000 meters with exhilarating displays of front running.

Their victories followed Paul Ereng and Julius Kariuki’s triumphs in the 800 meters and 3,000 meters steeplechase.

Kenya netted four gold medals, their best track tally at an Olympic games.

“There are so many good runners in Kenya,” 21 year old Rono said. “Even at ‘our Olympic trials you’re not guaranteed a place, there’s so much talent there.”

Kenyan Athletics has even more depth these days than 20 years ago when their runners exploded on to the scene at the Mexico Olympics.

Kip Keino, then an un coached 28 year old, was one of the stars of that game, winning the 1,500 meters and missing the 5,000 title by 0.2 of a second as Kenya grabbed three gold’s,

These days Kenyan talent is more harnessed, the more promising youngsters like Rono win Athletics Scholarships to the United States.

Ngugi, 26 and World Cross Country ‘Champion for the past three years, is one of the few top runners still training at home.

Before the games began, no less an authority than Keino himself tipped him for glory and pointed him out as the man who could beat the Moroccan Master said Aquita

“If there’s anyone capable of bring Aouita down to earth, that person is Ngugi,” he said, “He has now reached the highpoint of his career.”

In the event, the injured Aouita decided not to enter the race,

Neguei,a Swahili speaking Army Private, a member of the Kikuyu tribe, comes from the beauty spot of Nyahururu and trains around the foot of Mount Kenya.

He was not short of confidence coming to Seoul, “If I am unlucky I don’t mind getting silver,” he said. “But! Want gold,”

Rono, no relation to former Kenyan star Henry Rono, went to the same school as Mike Boit and like him was originally coached by an Irish Priest, Brother Colm O’Connell.

‘A member of the Nandi tribe, as so many of Kenya’s greatest runners, he has always said he owned a big debt to O’Connell, Headmaster at St, Patrick’s School in Item i the great rift valley of Western Kenya.

“I don’t think I will ever meet a coach like brother Colm,” he once said. “He wouldn’t miss a meeting anywhere we went in the country and if we fell sick or had a problem he would’ take his own money and get us to the hospital. He cared about us.”

Rono has made big strides since taking scholarship last year at Mount St Mary’s College, Emmetsburg in Maryland, to emerge as a serious title contender in the blue rebind event of the Olympics.

It was a sentimental return to South Korea for the young Kenyan. He made the first foreign trip of his life to Seoul in 1984 and won the 1500 and 5,000 World Senior Titles.

SORTS

RAJ SINGH

Sports Editor

Article extracted from this publication >> October 14, 1988