Discovery Kenya, where young people build their dreams of an Olympics

ELDORET – Every morning Jonathan runs to school in bare feet. And he’s not a lazy person who goes out at the last minute without even getting dressed. Simply, the institute is 5 kilometers from there. And the distance, including the return at the end of the lessons, is the perfect training for him, who is 8 years old and has only one dream in life: to become a marathon runner. Banal dream, that is, widespread, in upper Kenya, one of the kingdoms of running, which has been producing champions of cross-country and middle-distance racing for 30 years. Actually, since 32: Discovery Kenya has been around for a long time, a cross-country race at the Eldoret Sports Club, a slightly bumpy lawn and a bar for members where the “no gun” trolley stands out on the wall next to the photo of President William Ruto, a prohibition of weapons.

Over time the race revealed Eliud Kipchoge, Olympic champion in Rio and current marathon record holder, and Olympians Faith Chepngetich, Ezekiel Kemboi and Alice Timbilil. And then there is an athlete who has never run here, but whom Jonathan keeps in mind as an example: Brigid Kosgei, silver in Tokyo 2021, current hour record, who started exactly like him: 10 km home-school per day. In short, the race is a prospect of a better life, or perhaps simply of a life, in a land that may not be miserable, but poor, with red dirt roads that dust the simple merchandise offered for sale on the sidewalks, shops and houses often plates, a public order that in the evening is a real problem (the sign of the bar is not accidental), the rampant bribe (across the country: at the entrance to Nairobi airport dominates the writing “Corruption free zone”, which encourages, not deters). Or maybe, in fact it runs, which here is a bit of a philosophy of life, a bit of a way of moving around in the absence of anything else and above all a hope. Among the first to notice this was Gabriele Rosa, a doctor and sports trainer who over the years has discovered great talents, one above all Samuel Wanjiru, a talent as great as he is fragile, who passed in three years from his triumph in Beijing 2008 to his death after falling from a balcony after an argument with his wife.

It was Rosa himself, together with one of his first champions, Moses Tanui (first to run the half marathon under the hour, at the Stramilano 1993), who conceived and organized Discovery Kenya, races for around 3,000 male and female athletes from 5 to 21 years, divided by age group. For children like Jonathan it is simply fun, in which, however, they begin to smell the atmosphere of the race, of the competition. Many like him run barefoot, because they really don’t have shoes and by now his foot has developed the right calluses so as not to be destroyed by this arid iron land. And in fact even those who have shoes, not necessarily for sports, not necessarily of the right size, use them to compete for fear that in the meantime they’ll be stolen, a risk that’s not exactly low here around here. Not to mention the look: you run with what you have, even the school uniform, that is the skirt for the girls, or with a sweater, with 27 degrees in the shade without any shadow.

But what counts is the run, which even without breathable technical material and balancing gel sneakers is real and magnificent to behold, along a route that varies from 500 meters for the little ones to 10 kilometers for adults. No tactics: stretches, sprints, sprints and so on and so forth. Here we live on little: a hen, a cow, the land. We live, in fact, and for this reason all physicists are threadlike, with very long but very thin legs, toothpicks that one wonders how they manage to contain muscles. Instead there are all right, and it seems to see gazelles running for stride and elegance. For the winning children (Jonathan can’t make it, but he’s happy all the same), a symbolic prize, the first of his life. For adults, much more: the possibility of being able to enter one of Rosa’s camps, the road to a possible future as a professional. And the school. «Because we don’t want to raise people who only think about racing – says Rosa – but above all people who think. What a diploma. Without it, you can’t run. Then of course the better they are, the more races they win, the better it will be. But even the best careers come to an end. And maybe finding yourself with a lot of money without knowing how to spend it is the best way to squander it or have it stolen. We are here to raise men and women, not to unscrupulously accumulate cannon fodder to burn after three races. We support local schools, we even built one and created kindergartens and libraries. And in any case here in every school there is at least one hour of physical activity a day».

And it is also with such reasoning that Rosa and all of his organizational machinery in Kenya (especially Eldoret, the Rift Valley area, the plateau that even exceeds 3,000 meters of altitude) is considered a national hero. For three years, between Covid and aging (82 years), he hadn’t set foot here. And now everyone looks at him with admiration, they shake his hand, have their photos taken, welcome him like a king. But seriously: in Kaptabuk, the village where he went to inaugurate a library built by an Italian sponsor, Arcese, there were 400 children singing in Swahili and a small group of mothers who never stopped doing tribal dances, Rosa was forced to put on a cape and a pom-pom cap made on purpose and in the end he also received a surprise: «They made me sit down, close my eyes and squeeze a shaman’s stick with one hand, some grass with the other and they started saying mystical phrases. I thought the gift was a sheep.’ It was a sheep. Which he in turn gave to the inhabitants of Kaptabuk. Difficult to carry it around the 5 camps scattered around the Kenyan Rift Valley, plus two in Uganda. All simple, essential centers (the beds are on the way to Torongo: until now people slept with the mattress on the floor), but where there is all the equipment needed to live as an athlete, even being lost in the void and not offering evening alternatives – translation, temptations – for teenagers who could run away from the red dirt roads immersed in nature: sensational the paths on the Nandi Hills, immersed in the tea crops. The Kenyan one is little known, but 99% of it is exported to the world. And that’s not the only local wealth, in addition to the hocks of aspiring marathon runners: if the earth is red it’s because it’s full of iron and other raw materials, which have attracted the attention of the Chinese. Who made a simple barter: give us and in exchange we’ll pave many roads for you. Which perhaps has taken away poetry from some training, but has greatly simplified the movements, which are still complicated rather than by the continuous invasion of donkeys and cows, by a very sporty driving style, which not even cursed invisible bumps are able to fight, indeed they often increase damage, and poor ability to brake.

Romanticism here marries business masterfully: young people run for pleasure, but also hoping to make money (just win an important marathon and you’re set for life) and Rosa too obviously puts a lot of social energy into her business, which however, it obviously remains aimed at profit, research and the management of samples. His return after three years has perhaps something melancholy, given his age and some ailments, a bit like wanting to go back to review what has been built over the years, expand it and gradually entrust it more and more to his collaborators in Italy and on the spot, reserving the role of noble father, but in places like this one is more like saying Great Soul. «It could be the last time I come back, I wanted to see if everything was in order. It is to the point that I am planning a Discovery Kenya dedicated to cycling». The balance is the certainty of having built something that will last over time and that will continue to produce young gazelles ready to win in all the races in the world, but which in addition to those leg-shaped toothpicks will also have a brain. And they will also be able to run in life. “Maybe I did something good,” he sighs.