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Oh brother where art thou?
By Steve Landells
An Irish missionary who has brought countless gold medals to Kenya fears
for the future of the war-ravaged state.
Brother Colm O’Connell is a worried man.
For more than 30 years O’Connell, a member of the Patrician brothers,
a Catholic order founded in his native Ireland, has lived and worked in
Kenya unearthing a stream of world-class athletes in what is known as
the cradle of champions.
However these are dark times in Kenya, a nation once regarded as a bedrock
of security and democracy in an often troubled continent.
Last December’s election returned Mwai Kibaki to power for a second
term but Raila Odinga has accused Kibaki’s Party of National Unity
of rigging the vote. The ensuing violence has stirred up ethnic grievances
over land and poverty that have bedevilled Kenya since independence leading
to more than 1,000 deaths and the displacement of in excess of 300,000
people.
The future of the East African nation appears on a knife-edge and for
Mallow-born O’Connell, speaking to The Irish Post via telephone,
he has concerns and fears for its future.
“Yes, the area was affected,” said O’Connell of the
violence in his area of the Kenyan highlands which he has called home
for more than three decades.
“Eldoret was seen as the centre of upheaval here since January and
that is very close by,” he added. “None of my athletes were
directly involved in the violence but to expect them to focus on training
is very difficult. There was a real level of tension in training.”
Following the initial post-election eruption of violence O’Connell
accepts the situation has eased. However it is an uneasy peace and he
fears for the long-term preparations of dozens of Kenyan athletes ahead
of the Beijing Olympics.
“Their (the athletes) training foundation has been affected and
you lay your foundation to run well in July and August in January and
February. At the moment things are on hold,” he said of the state
of the country.
“One day we hear talk of a settlement and the next day that is not
quite the case. Even after a political settlement there will still be
a lot of work to be done on land issues and re-establishing displaced
people. I don’t know what has caused people to start shooting at
each other. Kenya was always seen as the great rock of stability. The
way it has happened has really shaken me up.”
Brother O’Connell is one of the great understated success stories
of track and field, a pioneer who helped usher in a new age of success
for Kenyan and African athletics. Yet after arriving in Kenya in 1976
on a two-year contract to teach geography at St. Patrick’s High
School for boys in the village of Iten in the Kenyan highlands, he could
never have predicted the direction his life would take.
The move to Kenya was the first time the 27-year-old had left Ireland
and he quickly discovered his new world was completely alien.
“It was remote, isolated, there was no tarmac on the roads and no
running water,” O’Connell said. “Having come from Ireland
in the 1970s it took a bit of getting used to.”
However, O’Connell was enthused by his pupils’ passion for
sport and was particularly impressed by their enthusiasm for athletics.
On his arrival a British teacher, Paul Foster — the brother of former
British Olympic 10,000m bronze medallist Brendan — and an American,
Norman Thomson, ran the track programme but after Foster returned to Britain,
O’Connell took over the mantle in 1978, although he admits it was
a step into the unknown. Pupils trained on a dirt road — the school
has no track — and his knowledge of athletics was rudimentary.
“I had a passion, like most people, for all sports,” said
O’Connell, now aged 59. “I was aware, as any sports fan was,
of the Kenyan runners and the likes of Kip Keino at the 1968 Olympic Games.
The school had a bit of a tradition for athletics and Mike Boit, the 1972
Olympic 800m bronze medallist, was on old boy but I didn’t really
know anything about athletics. I had to learn on the job. As a new coach
I had to learn a lot from a technical angle, it was an area of concern
for me. I had no books to reference and I had to learn a lot through trial
and error. I often used the athletes to guide me.”
O’Connell admitted in the early days because of a lack of exposure
and international competition it was hard to fathom the high levels of
natural talent his pupils possessed.
However he believes he was fortunate that his early years as a coach coincided
with significant developments in global athletics.
“The sport turned professional in the 1980s,” he explained.
“Suddenly athletics became a more attractive proposition for young
Kenyan talent because they could finally make money out of the sport.”
This was to create a seismic shift in athletics. At the 1984 Los Angeles
Olympic Games — Kenya’s first for 12 years after two successive
boycotts — they picked up two track and field medals. But by the
time of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Kenya snared seven medals including four
golds to dominate the men’s middle and long-distance programme.
Where once there was a trickle of world-class Kenyan athletics talent,
there was now a flood.
Meanwhile at St. Patrick’s O’Connell had by now a successful
coaching system up and running and aided by his pupils’ hunger for
success he produced a stream of world-class athletes including the likes
of three-time Boston Marathon winner Ibrahim Hussein, former world champion
and world steeplechase record-holder Wilson Boit Kipketer and three-time
world 800m champion and current world record-holder Wilson Kipketer (not
related).
A tree was planted in a grove at the school, bearing the name of the pupil
who has achieved a World Championship or Olympic gold medal or broken
a world record. However, such was the staggering success levels at the
school the grove was developing into a forest and O’Connell remarked:
“The world champions came so fast and furious we had to reduce the
size of the plants to shrubs!”
Not satisfied with developing the raw talent at St. Patrick’s, O’Connell
later branched out to set up youth training camps to identify youngsters
who did not have the opportunity to attend St. Patrick’s boarding
school. Organised during the school holidays the camp was supported by
five Kenyan coaches who sought to tap into the best vast reservoir of
talent within a 75km radius of the city of Eldoret — the spiritual
home of Kenyan distance running.
In 1993 O’Connell, who by this time was head teacher at St. Patrick’s,
left to take up a new position at Tambach Teaching Training College —
10km away from Iten — but he has maintained an influential presence
in the sport. He still successfully directs the youth camps and such has
been his reputation as one of the world’s leading coaches he now
acts as a personal coach to a number of world-class Kenyan athletes, including
former world cross-country silver medallist Isaac Songok and former World
Junior 5,000m champion Augustine Choge.
But he insisted just because he is now working with a smaller group of
athletes, the task is no easier.
“Yes, it’s a big challenge, a big responsibility,” he
said. “It takes a lot more time, athletics is their career. Much
bigger demands are placed on you because you are delving into many aspects
of their life such as diet and making sure they have enough sleep.”
However after more than 30 years producing and nurturing generations in
Kenya he told The Irish Post he is not in a rush to return home. He admitted
on his annual trips back to Ireland he has become less connected with
the country of his birth and jokes he has been away so long he has to
visit most of his friends in the cemetery.
No, O’Connell insists he has unfinished work in athletics in his
adopted homeland and hopes to carry on unearthing the stars of the future.
“I didn’t set out to achieve what I have done,” he admitted.
“It is sometimes difficult to comprehend all the world champions
we have produced at different levels. But as long as I’m healthy
and there is a role for me I will carry on. That is, God willing everything
remains safe in Kenya.” |
