Young Keino Chasing Father’s Legacy

The race is billed as the national high school indoor mile championship, but Bryan Dameworth of Agoura High will compete against more than just his countrymen in the Sunkist Invitational track and field meet at the Sports Arena tonight.

He also will square off against some of the top high school runners from Africa. They attend U. S. high schools, but their names--Keino, Bile and Aden--bespeak their African heritage.

Ibrahim Aden and Jama Bile are Somalians who attend Woodson High in Fairfax, Va., and Martin Keino, a Kenyan, is a student at Fork Union Military Academy in the central part of the state.

Aden’s name might not ring a bell among track and field fans, although his older brother, Jama, has run the mile in 3 minutes, 55 seconds. Keino and Bile, however, conjure up images of past and present greatness in African distance running.

Bile is the younger brother of Abdi Bile, the 1987 world champion in the 1,500 meters who was ranked No. 1 in that event by Track and Field News in 1989.

Keino, however, has an even greater claim to fame.

His father, Kipchoge (Kip), won four Olympic medals, including two golds, set two world records and is one of only two men (Finland’s Paavo Nurmi was the other) to win Olympic medals in the 1,500, 3,000 steeplechase and 5,000. Yet Kip’s greatest accomplishment could be that he fathered the Kenyan running revolution.

No one popularized running more in Kenya than Keino, who defeated Jim Ryun of the United States for the gold medal in the 1,500 in the Mexico City Olympics in 1968.

Keino ignited a revolution that has seen the East African nation of 23.7 million win more Olympic medals (21, including nine gold) in middle- and long-distance running than any country in the world since the 1964 Games in Tokyo. That achievement is especially impressive since Kenya boycotted the 1976 Games in Montreal because of New Zealand’s rugby ties with South Africa and because Kenya did not participate in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow in support of the U. S.-led boycott over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.

Success in running, however, has not come easily for the younger Keino, who left his family in Eldoret, Kenya, to attend Fork Union in the fall of 1985.

His performances were so uninspiring in the eighth and ninth grades that Fork Union Coach Fred Hardy Jr. figured Keino never would never develop into the elite runner he is today.

“I figured he might be able to help our cross-country team as the fourth or fifth runner as a senior,” Hardy says. “But I had written off any ideas about him becoming great. He ran so mediocre for the first two years that I never thought he was going to do anything like he has.”

Fred Hardy Sr., who met Kip Keino in 1966 and is a family friend, concurs with his son’s analysis.

“(Martin) didn’t show any signs of his genes for the first two years,” said the elder Hardy, who coached at the University of Richmond from 1950-1985. “But he’s really improved in the last two years. He’s coming on like a house afire.”

After running 1,600 meters in 5 minutes, 27 seconds as a freshman, Keino improved to 4:27 as a sophomore and 4:16.8 as a junior.

His goal is to head the national list in the 1,600 this year, which probably means he will have to run under 4:10.

“I know that’s fast, but I think I’m capable of doing that,” said Keino, who has personal bests of 9:14 in the 3,200 and 9:34 in the steeplechase. “I’ve really improved in the last couple of years.”

Maturation has been the major factor in Keino’s development.

When he entered Fork Union, a boys’ school with an enrollment of 600, in the eighth grade, Keino was 5-foot-1 and 110 pounds. He grew to 5-6 and 120 a year later, and now he stands 5-11 and weighs 140.

“He’s begun to look less like a little boy and more like a young man,” said Hardy Sr., who coached 1988 Olympic 800 champion Paul Ereng of Kenya.

“He’s physically stronger and more mature,” the younger Hardy adds. “To put it bluntly, there wasn’t much to him a couple of years ago.”

Keino’s increased strength was evident in an outstanding senior cross-country campaign, during which he placed second in the Kinney South regional in Charlotte, N. C., and sixth in the Kinney national championships at Morley Field in San Diego on Dec. 9.

“I was pleased with my finish at nationals,” Keino said. “But I felt I could have run better.”

Nevertheless, his coach is expecting great things from his protege this season.

“I never really thought Martin was that good at cross-country,” the younger Hardy said. “He’s always been better at track. That’s why I’m really looking forward to this season. I think he’s a whole lot better than he was last year.”

Somewhat surprisingly, Keino says that he feels less pressure as an elite runner than he did when he was struggling.

“It was hard when I was younger and not running that well,” said Keino, the fourth of eight children. “People would say to me, ‘You should be winning these races easily if you’re Kip Keino’s son.’ When I didn’t win, they couldn’t understand why.

“But I said, ‘So what if my dad was a runner in the Olympics. That doesn’t mean I have to be great too.’ ”

His father, who runs the Kip Keino Childrens Home with his wife, Phyllis, in Eldoret in western Kenya, said that his son entered distance running of his own accord.

“It came about naturally,” said Kip, 50. “We never pressured him. Anything he does well, we encourage him to do, but we never pressure him. Running should be fun. . . . He is still so young. He has a long ways to go before he has to get serious.”

Martin Keino believes that he has become more serious about running as he has improved.

“What my dad did motivates me now,” he said. “But I never feel any pressure because of it. I want to run well but not to match my father.”

While Keino is the latest in a long line of Kenyan distance runners who have attended Fork Union--others include Charles Cheruiyot, who placed sixth in the 5,000 in the 1984 Olympics, and Kip Cheruiyot, who finished seventh in the 1,500 in the 1988 Games--the school has a long list of outstanding athletes in other sports.

NFL quarterbacks Don Majkowski of the Green Bay Packers and Vinny Testaverde of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, wide receiver Mike Quick of the Philadelphia Eagles, and center Mel Turpin of the NBA’s Washington Bullets also attended the school.

A good student (3.6 grade-point average), Keino is being heavily recruited by several schools, including UCLA and Arizona.

He plans to make recruiting trips to all three campuses, but his top priority at the moment is tonight’s race against a field that includes Dameworth, the Kinney national cross-country champion; Louie Quintana of Arroyo Grande, the third-place finisher at nationals; and Aden and Bile.

“I’m just starting to get back into good shape,” Keino said. “I think I can run between 4:16 and 4:20 right now, but it will probably take me another month or two before I’m ready to run fast.”