A Run From Boston to Barcelona : Marathon: Today’s race will determine Olympic teams for athletes from Kenya, Mexico, Finland and Tanzania.

There are nine Kenyan runners entered in today’s 96th annual Boston Marathon, all vying for one remaining opening on their nation’s Olympic team. That alone may make the race its most competitive ever.

Little else in road racing brings out the tenacity and competitive verve that an Olympic Trials does. As a consequence, every four years around the world there are footraces of increased tension and import.

This is the way it will be for the Kenyans today, as well as for 54 Mexicans, eight Finns and four runners from Tanzania. They will run 26.2 miles for the right to run again at Barcelona in 3 1/2 months.

At least one Kenyan in the race, defending Boston champion Ibrahim Hussein, will not have the Olympic pressure. Hussein, ranked No. 8 in the world and the holder of the Kenyan marathon record of 2 hours 8 minutes 43 seconds, already has been named to the Olympic team. So has Douglas Wakiihuri, the 1988 Olympic marathon silver medalist.

Hussein will run, he says, to help his countrymen race to a fast time. Not that they need the help. What Hussein has been doing for his country is extending its tradition of success at middle distances up to the marathon, a relatively new event for Kenyans.

“In Kenya, everything begins for us at the steeplechase,” Hussein said.

So new is the idea of marathoning to Kenya that there is not a certified marathon course in the country. Kenyan sports officials dispatched two groups of runners to seek qualifying times, one set to a marathon in Japan last month and this group to Boston. They are accustomed to travel. Of the nine Kenyans running today, only four live and train in Kenya, where there are a handful of all-weather tracks. The rest live in the United States, Italy and Japan.

Since Kenya re-emerged from its self-imposed Olympic exile--boycotting in 1976 and 1980--the country has held a stranglehold on the middle distance races.

--In the 1988 Olympics, Kenyan athletes won every men’s event from 800 meters to 5,000, and Wakiihuri placed second in the marathon.

--At last year’s World Championships it was more of the same. Kenya won the 800, finished 1-2 in the steeplechase, won the 5,000 and was 1-2 in the 10,000.

--Earlier this month, the Kenyan men won their seventh consecutive World Cross Country championship. John Ngugi of Kenya won his fifth title.

Hussein’s victory at Boston in 1988 was a breakthrough. He became the first African to win at Boston and, as a Kenyan, his victory made an impression at home.

“He is our hero,” said Mathai Matthews, team manager and coach for the Kenyan team. “Our children used to want to run the steeplechase and 5,000. They wanted to be like Kip Keino and Henry Rono. Now, they want to run farther.”

To do that, Hussein had to leave his village of Kapsapet, near Nairobi, and travel to Albuquerque, N.M. He attended the University of New Mexico, where he was a steeplechaser. Later he helped lure dozens of African runners to the city’s high altitude and clean air.

Hussein, 33, eventually had to leave the running mecca he helped create, finding it too crowded. He said he has been training at 8,000 feet in Flagstaff, Ariz.

His race today probably will be run among familiar faces who will likely utilize a familiar strategy.

“When we (Africans) run against each other, we run hard,” he said. “And sometimes we help each other. But other times we run hard, and the guys decide they want to go on their own. So we compete against each other the last few miles. It becomes a race within a race, and that is what makes it fun.”

The women’s race features three top former East Bloc marathoners, led by Wanda Panfil of Poland.

Panfil, 33, is the world’s top-ranked marathon runner and the winner of the 1991 World Championship.

Panfil will be challenged by Olga Markova of Russia, who was third in the 1991 Los Angeles Marathon and second that year at New York. Also in the race is Uta Pippig of Germany, third in Boston last year.